Reading news items is my #1 hobby. Every day after getting up from bed, I spend almost an hour over the news on the internet. Though I go through more US news, I also try to cover my home country, Bangladesh, and other countries. Sometimes, I try to find the news from CNN or Washington Post but also from the newspapers from the countries of origin such as for current war news, I check Kyiv Post or Pravda RU.
One time, I had a dream of joining the US embassy anywhere in the world in the wing of CIA. Never materialized. Does it matter now? Not at all because:
Satisfaction in life is very important and that satisfaction stays in everybody’s mind. There are thousands of ways one can be satisfied.
An 85-year Harvard study found that the #1 thing that makes us satisfied or happy in life is to stay in “social fitness.” To have social fitness one doesn’t need to be rich. Just an ordinary person can have better social fitness.
I remember when we were in Clarksburg, West Virginia, I used to take a bus to go to my university. Sometimes, it happened that I was the only passenger, and the driver and I became very good friends. We invited my bus driver and his family for dinner a number of times.
Truly speaking, I am satisfied being in the USA and whatever I am doing now.
News makes you happy as well as sad. Somehow, most of the news makes me sad. People are dying because of unnecessary war. People are dying because of natural calamities such as hurricanes, tsunami, flood, fire.
And then there are individual sad stories. Here is one from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
A middle-aged man, Bhuvan, after work took a motorcycle-ride service to go home. All of a sudden, a gang of criminals fired indiscriminately at another top criminal riding in a private car in Dhaka Street. The bullet hit the motorcycle rider, Bhuvan on the head.
He is hospitalized and still unconscious. Whom to blame? The government or God? What a burden for a lower middle-class family of Bhuvan!
However, I must say, this is an extremely rare incident in Dhaka streets. Guns are not in everybody’s hand in Bangladesh. But a different scenario in the USA. Guns are everywhere, even in the hand of 2 year old kids. Couple of headlines from newspaper:
Arlington toddler dies after accidentally shooting self with gun found in home. Another headline says, a toddler in Ohio accidentally shoots pregnant mom, killing her and unborn child.
And for teenagers, guns become a toy for them to use for mass shooting. Gun violence in the USA, whether intentional or unintentional is almost everyday breakfast.
According to the National Vital Statistics System — Mortality data (2021), the number of unintentional injury deaths reached 224,935.
The unintentional injury deaths included: unintentional fall deaths, Motor vehicle traffic deaths, poisoning deaths, firearm deaths, drug overdose/drug poisoning deaths.
Now the question is what to do. In Bangladesh as I know, if the criminals are caught, there is severe punishment, even a death sentence.
Dispatch readers will be surprised if I tell you that in one past death of a person in Bangladesh, a dozen people were given a death sentence. Hopefully in Bhuvan’s case the criminals will be caught, and justice will be served.
But in the USA, things are very different because of politics and only two political parties. The gun violences happened in a few European countries or Australia, and New Zealand but they all took the right steps to stop this violence. But in the USA, no remedies.
The USA is a research and statistics-oriented country. In many areas she made a breakthrough discovery for the world. The unintentional deaths in most cases occurred because of not following protocol.
Death always hurts and makes us sad whether this is in the family or out of the family. Shouldn’t we try our best to avoid unintentional death?
Jiben Roy, a native of Bangladesh, teaches chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Mississippi University for Women. His email address is [email protected].
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