Why we will all be OK

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.

The seriousness of Pakistan's problems is so severe that it is natural for people to be sick with worry about the future of the country. Pakistani blood is treated cheaply by terrorists, by other countries, but most of all, by the military, religious and political elite of Pakistan itself. Pakistani children don't have enough schools, their schools don't have enough teachers, their teachers don't have enough training, and their training doesn't have enough substance. Aspiring Pakistani mothers face dire social indicators, including high maternal and infant mortality rates, poor primary school enrolment rates and water-borne diseases that have no business being in business in the 21st century. Baby girls are raised to face a lifetime of gender-based discrimination. Politicians are corrupt, judges are self-righteous, and there is no electricity. A national obsession with symbolism that borders on the insane has made more of a mockery of faith and ideology in Pakistan than any cartoon or conspiracy ever could.

Last Friday afternoon at the TEDx Karachi event, with the country as pregnant as it ever is with these burdens, a number of speakers did something that we all need to do a lot more of. They inspired hope. TEDx organisers Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Awab Alvi, Batool Hassan, Meher Jaffri, Hiba Ali Raza, Asad Rahman and Sumaira Jaffery should be proud of themselves. It is not easy to be hopeful and optimistic in this environment. They helped make it easy.

TEDx Karachi speakers spoke from the heart, embraced the collective vulnerability of millions of Pakistanis, and infused their inspirational messages with the rigour and granularity of real-world success. They didn't just do this by appealing to our rational best selves. They did it by appealing to the connectivity we all share as human beings. For one afternoon at least, I was forced to consider how important inspiration

just might be, in the long, arduous and exhausting quest for a Pakistan that works for all Pakistanis, not just those that have captured the state using guns, God and giveaways.

What rational reason did Abdul Sattar Edhi have to do what he has done for as long as any of us can remember? Edhi ambulances are almost the only certain thing in the uncertainty of Pakistan. So too is our comfort in making donations to his charitable work. The same Pakistan that we lament, Bhutto and Zia's Pakistan, is the one that produced Abdul Sattar Edhi.

Edhi is not alone. He just shines brighter than most of Pakistan's galaxy of heroes. All of them were the product of this same broken, orphaned, dysfunctional and dangerous Pakistan. If we spend so much time lamenting the bad and the ugly that we do unto ourselves in this massive and confounding country, perhaps we should spend just a moment every day, celebrating the good too?

We should celebrate Prof Abdus Salam. Not only because he won a Nobel Prize, but because despite the manner in which Pakistan shunned and rejected him and his people, he never stopped loving Pakistan. We should celebrate Shehla Zia Khan who helped set the table for public-interest litigation in Pakistan, and fought tirelessly for women and minorities her whole life. We should celebrate Akhtar Hameed Khan who helped define development. We should celebrate Hakeem Said who taught us what the word Hamdard really means. We should celebrate Razia Bhatti, who valued the truth over the best job in her business.

And whoever made the rule that we need to wait for people to die before we celebrate their genius? We don't and we shouldn't. Nor do we need to agree with everything these heroes say and do. But we must salute them for standing up and doing magnificent and courageous things.

We should celebrate Asma Jahangir's lifetime of work for the rule of law and human rights, in the face of aggressive and sometimes violent opposition. We should celebrate Ansar Burney, who fights for poor people in prisons. We should celebrate Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, an uncompromising leftist in an era when most on the left have found rolling green hills of neocon pastures much more comfortable. We should celebrate Junaid Jamshed, a born-again Muslim preacher and entrepreneur, in an epoch of pop music celebrity worship and self-worship.

Of course, we're not comfortable with celebrating heroes we don't agree with. We should get over it. If the problem is that we're too married to our ideas about what Pakistan should represent, then the other side -- whether it is left, right, centre or elsewhere -- isn't the only guilty party. We, wherever we are on the spectrum, are just as guilty.

Let us celebrate Imran Khan. He's clearly learning disabled when it comes to recognising and accepting failure. But that's not always been a bad thing. Cricket is just a game, but Khan's cancer hospital was built with Pakistani money in the same lost decade of BB and Nawaz Sharif that we lament all the time.

Let us celebrate Agha Hasan Abedi. The end of the BCCI was ignominious, for sure. But before it fell, it rose to be the 7th largest bank in the world. If any of the Citibank, IMF or WB bureaucrat babus that are responsible for keeping Pakistan afloat had half the imagination and audacity of Abedi, Pakistan may not have been the economic basket case that it is today.

Let us celebrate the Pakistani policeman and soldier. Officer or not, they put their bodies between us and the bullets and bombs that seek to destroy us. They don't make foreign policy. They don't steal land. They don't promote extremism. They just go out on the battlefield and fight. For us.

Nobody is suggesting that we should stop thinking critically. But the darkness and gloom that prevails over most Pakistanis, no matter what kind of ideology we claim to represent, is a disease for which there are living, breathing, walking remedies all around us.

Dr Umar Saif is an award-winning computer scientist that left a teaching and research position at MIT to teach in Pakistan. Novelists Mohsin Hamid and Mohammad Hanif moved back to Pakistan after long periods abroad, so that they can contribute their unique talents to their country. While they were abroad, a sea of nameless, faceless journalists, lawyers, accountants, doctors, bankers and farmers got up and went to work every day, doing the best they could. Did they run the traffic light on occasion? Litter out of their vehicle? Drive out of lane? Sure they did. But if we start condemning and convicting every little thing, there will be no chance for us to see the beauty in us and around us. We cannot be held hostage to ugliness all the time. It is unproductive, uninspiring, and subhuman to be so beholden and captivated by our failures.

At TEDx Karachi, the final speaker was Jacqueline Novogratz, best-selling author and head of the Acumen Fund, which seeks to stimulate for-profit ideas that help poor people tackle problems like housing, cash-flow and clean water. Jacqueline spoke of how deeply inspiring her relationship with Pakistanis has been. Novogratz inspires admiration instantly, but we should listen carefully. If the Pakistanis working with the Acumen Fund can inspire a globally renowned thinker and doer, why shouldn't they inspire Pakistanis themselves?

On Sunday night, Coke Studio premiered its third season. Sure, multinational sponsorship of everything should be questioned. Sure, fusion music should be critiqued. But when producer Rohail Hyatt was pouring his life-force into putting Arif Lohar at the centre of an arrangement that sparkled because of Meesha Shafi's haunting voice, and Louis Pinto's enduring percussion genius -- he wasn't paying attention to the bad and the ugly. He was making good on Pakistan's promise. There is genius and beauty in all of us. We should spend a little time, every day, just appreciating that. We'll all be OK, because we'll never let Iqbal and Bulleh die. I'll drink a Coke (and for fairness' sake, a Pepsi) to that.