The Goal And The Journey

We all aspire for success, though it can vary in its kind and degree for each one of us, and work our way towards it. For me, though reaching the goal successfully is often a cause for celebration, it is most important to ensure that the integrity of such a success can withstand the test of the time. One of the greatest realizations I have had in my life is to pay as much attention to the means of reaching the goal as to the goal itself, to ensure that the success lives longer with its integrity intact forever. When one focuses on the means and details of the process to ensure that a true and genuine success is achieved, it will also incessantly put one’s honesty, ethics, and values to test, which ultimately will define the strength of one’s character. 

I strongly believe that the desire for a true and life-long success is even more important in the current world, given the numerous instances we see of people trying to reach their goals be it in sports, business, politics, and various other fields, with such short-sighted approach that it eventually brings them dishonor and significant losses to many others. The ancient wise sages have proclaimed that the secret of the real success and its longevity lies in paying as much attention to the means as to the end. For us humans, a great drawback in life is that we are so much drawn to the end result, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, and so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether. Analysis of disintegrated successes often reveals that the means of achieving the success were not paid enough attention. Proper attention to the strengthening of the means is what is required, since with the means alright, the result will eventually come. Once the goal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go of the goal from our mind, because the success will come when the means are perfected. The realization of the goal is the effect, while the means are the cause, and the attention to the means, therefore, is the great secret of real success in life.

When one makes a right decision at every junction in the path, not worrying much about any possible outcome and undaunted about the resulting challenges, it may lead to a longer and harder path but will invariably lead to the true success. This is the belief that matters to me most, and this is what the kind of person my kids should know and understand about me when they grow up, so that they can forever be proud of their dad.

Minds or Guns? Give Me Liberty (From Fear) or Give Me Death.

With great sadness I read this week's news that the Texas State Senate has approved a bill that allows anyone above 21 to carry a concealed gun (licensed) in the university campus. The bill is all but passed, pending approval from the State Texas State congress and the governor's office. It is already known that Gov.Perry has openly expressed his support for the bill (so far 23 other states rejected the bill, including Arizona where the governor rejected with a veto even after the state senate and congress passed the bill).

Apparently, the argument in favor of the bill is that it can provide the students an ability to defend themselves in case of any campus shootings similar to those happened at Virginia Tech (VT) and other universities. I just wonder who in the world came up with that logic! Do they really think, when pointed at with a gun and about to be shot, these untrained inexperienced young students have the time and the audacity to pull out a gun and shoot back?

Now, do I know anything about such situations? Oh yeah...absolutely! Within a few months of my first coming to USA as a graduate student, I was robbed at gunpoint on the university campus in that dark misty night of the Thanksgiving week. Even as a professor in my last job, more than a few times I did encounter students with an aggravated mind. One time when the final grades were out, a student called me on phone and gave enough abuse with some good expletives to remember for a lifetime. I don't know what the student would have done if he were in my office at that moment! My then colleagues too shared with me similar experiences. Just during the 2008-2009 academic year, there were more than a few attacks on women in the engineering building there. I am sure many remember the incidents of disgruntled researchers killing their committee members for reasons pertaining to tenure or doctoral defense decisions. When shootings happened at VT and other universities, there was a lighter discussion that working at the university has made the professor's job most dangerous, only after the soldier's situation in Iraq that time.

But then, are the above incidents reason to support carrying guns at universities? Even after extensive training, practice, and experience in handling the weapons, police and military personnel occasionally mishandle the guns and in that process injure or kill their colleagues. Then, what can we expect of these twenty-some young individuals just into college, feeling macho and proud of carrying guns?

We have a tough "zero-tolerance" policy at K-12 schools when it comes to weapons, even in Texas. Imagine what happens to the thinking of these kids when we go from zero-tolerance to 100% freedom in carrying guns. Can we expect these young kids to suddenly grow mature and highly professional in those couple of years and know how to handle a great responsibility. Remember, with great power comes the great responsibility. Did these lawmakers bother to consult the sociologists and psychologists in this regard? This brings up another interesting possibility - gun becoming one more show-off gadget! It is well known that we humans try to gain social stature among peers by showing off the best possessions. Modern youngsters use their latest cool mobile phones, laptops, and other electronic gadgets as those "proud" possessions. With this new law, add the gun to that list. And after that, it is easy to envision a scenario in which young guys in a group trying to show of their "cool" guns to each other and possibly mishandle the weapon.

And the statisticians - where are you? What is the probability of a single gun going off accidentally on a random day in an year at a university with say 20,000 population of which 20% (or may be more) carry guns; and now add into that an "uncontrollable" variable called rumor - a rumor suddenly floating around that a mad man with a gun is roaming on the campus. Imagine the mad rush to be the first one to shoot anyone resembling the suspect, however remotely, and become the hero. And, imagine the nightmare of the campus security personnel in handling this rush.

Oh! by the way, with thousands of guns on campus, are we not making it easier for that mad nut job who might have had the intention of shooting somebody but did not have access to a gun? Earlier, you needed both the intention and the weapon....now, you just need the intention and can sneak up on an unsuspecting student, steal his/her gun and take care of the business...how about that? Also, are we not making the university security personnel's job tougher? Earlier someone with a gun on campus could have been arrested suspecting his/her intentions and possibly prevent the crime from happening. Now with good and bad guys both carrying guns, it is hard to detect who is good and who is bad, until the crime is committed. And, that Mr. Lawmaker, is too late for those victims and their loved ones.

Again, do these lawmakers really take these young students to be well-trained SEALS or other military/FBI/police personnel to quickly react in an act of self-defense? When will they realize that those old wild west days were gone when the hero on the street was shown to have the skill and the deft to successfully shoot first even after the villain had drawn the gun earlier? Did they not see that the master western story teller John Ford himself had already depicted the times changing from the "gun power of the old west" to the "mind power of the modern era" in his 1962 masterpiece "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", through those two great legends, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, truly portraying the roles?

Rabindranath Tagore's famous poem comes to my mind: "where the mind is without fear"; when in a classroom with 50 people, the mind is constantly under fear when one of those at least 10 guns will go off!! When the mind is constantly under that fear, what purpose will universities achieve in imparting fearlessness in young minds to pursue greater ideas?

There is a reason universities are built with an open environment, unlike business offices, and you don't need a security badge to enter the buildings in the university (the exception I have seen is the EE building at UC-Berkeley, where you will be escorted inside as a visitor until you leave the building). They want universities to be abodes for free flow of great ideas and be birth places for reforms and movements, and eventually have a greater impact on the society. It is a shame to use that structural existence to promote the free flow of guns, under the pretext of self-defense.

No, this is not an argument about your right to possess weapons. You can possess all the weapons you want at home and use them in self-defense. The Second Amendment to the American Constitution protects your rights in that regard. This debate is about the sanity in bringing those weapons en masse into those temples of education and endanger the lives of your fellow men and women everyday to just give yourself a very small chance of self-defense once in a lifetime.

Regarding that self-defense, if I may make a statement, however extreme it may sound, "I would rather live with that rare possibility of getting shot by a mad man, than carry the gun everyday to accidentally shoot someone one day and live a miserable life for the rest".

I wonder what Patrick Henry (whose speech galvanized the American revolution and inspired the title), James Madison, George Mason, and Alexander Hamilton, some of the great founding fathers of this country and also the proponents of the Bill of Rights, have to say on this matter, if they will.