Next is what?

Right now three things are uniting Nepali people over the social media. Those three things are Gautam Buddha was Born in Nepal, SAFF Championship and The strike yesterday. The strike thing has pretty much cooled down by the time I am writing this, so I am certain now that SAFF championship and Buddha was born in Nepal slogan is pretty much the thing to talk about.

My query is "What is next?" What is going to be next trend for Nepalese youths in Facebook or twitter or other social media outlet to express their nationality. If it is the idea about hating some other neighboring country then I don't think I might participate. But I am down with writing about how patriotic I am in my status and being proud.

I don't have a problem with people writing patriotic statuses. Actually I like it but I hate the fact that these things lie only in the social media but they do not materialize in the streets or in the campaign to clean roads or in the campaign to clean Baghmati or in the campaign to sign a petition to save national parks. I am cool with people being patriotic in football, I am even down with protesting when some country says Buddha was not born in our country. But where is the action?

How many of us has really paid attention to football players and their financial lives? Do we let our kids dream of being professional players? When was the last time we visited lumbini? Or when was the last time we did any lobbying to make Lumbini more developed? When was the last time that we really followed Budhha's teachings of non-violence? Certainly it was not when were in a Civil War or when we were arguing with our neighbors with Khukuris in our hands on a issue about some buffalo.

I do not wish ill or accuse anyone of doing this. I am just evaluating what we do. I am evaluating myself even. We expect our politicians to be ethical, non-hypocrites and reasonable people. But we forget they come from the same society as ours where we are with false sense of nationalism and misdirected energy and time. Where we say we are patriotic and do less to show it.

Can't we stop the people who do strikes by not obeying them simultaneously and all at once? The answer is we are afraid. Yes, we are. Me, you and everyone is afraid of their lives and moreover of our property. That is why we do not defy strikes. But if were as courageous as we were while writing statuses then we would not have that problem.