Kindness

I didn't believe in kindness.

In this age where wit is almost always equal to sarcasm, and cynicism is the way to survival, kindness just seems like an unpopular way of being. I don't think I've been a kind person. I know I'm not a very good person, and kindness isn't a trait I'm usually associated with. I don't see a lot of kindness in my day-to-day life, which is sad, but I'd like to think that that's because it's just simply rare. People don't do kindness anymore. They'd rather be anything but kind. Kind is boring.

I don't know what to do with kindness.

I'm so used to the fact that no one bothers with being kind anymore, and since unkindness (if that's even a word) is contagious, I tend to think that it doesn't exist anymore.

But it does. 

Someone could be so kind to you, even though you don't think you've done anything good enough to deserve it.

Someone could shower you with so much kindness that you don't know what to do with it.

A Little Life's Jude St. Francis didn't know what to do with Harold's genuine kindness. He's not used to it. He's unfamiliar with it, and it feels alien to him. He thought such kindness is unnecessary; soon Harold is going to find out that he's not worth all the kindness, the love, the affection that Harold offered him. Soon, something will go wrong, and he's afraid that he won't be ready when that happens if he enjoys this happiness; the happiness of being the object of someone's kindness. But Harold loved him anyway. In spite of all the danger. In spite of every thing that happened. 

I hope one day you'd find a kind person--a genuinely kind person. Someone who's kind to you. Someone who sees your worth, even when you couldn't see it; when you didn't know you had any. I hope this kind person will be kind to you just because they want to. Because they know that you could do with some kindness. That you deserve it. That you're not as bad as you think you are--not even half of it. I hope that what they do to you will make you realise that you are capable of something. Their kindness will lift you up. Nurture you. Help you to be the best person you could be. I hope that this person will awaken something in you that have been asleep and hiding in the deepest, darkest corner of you--and stick a candle to it.

And that someday, you will grow to be the kind person that you wish you'd met. 

Two A.M Ramblings

I know that I write a lot of melancholic stuffs in this page, and if you know me in real life, I sometimes act like a comic and tend to laugh at my own jokes. But like I believe all of you are, I'm not some two-dimensional character in a teen-lit novel. When the light is out and the night is dark, and my sleepiness is somewhere but in my head, I'm actually a very serious person. I re-watch Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom for the umpteenth time, teach myself the politics between the Sunnis and Shiites, and sometimes, try to think of how to someday leave the world better than I found it. Shouldn't be a hard work, don't you think? We were born into such a messed up world, won't take a genius to find what could be improved. The challenge, however, is in where, and how, to start.

You know how I was born into a middle class family of Javanese descent with a Muslim faith, and live my entire life in Jakarta? You know how the demographics of Indonesia's big picture is? Yep, like me. My family is, politically speaking, center-right. I grew up in the southern part of suburban Jakarta, which, truthfully speaking, is mostly inhabited by people like me. Sure, many of them don't exactly share my background, but you know, more or less, we are the pribumi. Indonesians don't understand political correctness, so I believe that it's still generally acceptable to say that word: pribumi. Most of my friends, I have just recently realized, tick all of the criteria I have just mentioned, like me. Come to think of it, during my first 20 years, I hardly know anyone who doesn't look like me.

If this was America, I'd be a white Irish girl with perhaps brunette hair living in New York. I'd be a part of Trump's target demography, to be honest. I'd be in a box full of privileged people simply because of their color and their faith, though not exactly the kind that the 1% has. I'd be the majority. And you know how privileged the majority is? Always remember this all throughout your life: There is no right or wrong. There's only popular opinion. When you're a majority, of course it's easier to make your opinion the popular opinion.

Then real life came and I was suddenly in a concrete jungle of a capital city we call Jakarta, which we all have a love-hate relationship with, and I was forced to educate myself about who I am, what I am, and how I should interact with people. I had to learn the hard way about my place in the actual world; about joining a community, an entire society that I had never been really exposed with. All of a sudden, here I am. In the middle of a culturally and ethnically diverse society that I wasn't aware I was lacking the experience of. All of a sudden, I had to learn how to place myself in this world, and where I am is really important to learn how to be politically correct.

Suddenly, I was a minority. Sure, sometimes it makes you feel like you're somewhat interesting. But it could also make you feel like being in an aquarium: everyone was watching you, examining you, asking you what it's like to be in your world. Suddenly, it's just a weird feeling. Not exactly sucks, but weird.

Now, imagine that Jakarta is a miniature of America: people from different ethnics, cultures and background flocked together to create its own dynamic. Just like America, where the immigrants are the real force behind their dynamics, Jakarta is also severely dependent on these people who once came to try their luck in the big city. This past holiday, I realized what an hellhole Jakarta is during the Eid-ul Fitr, when every last person I know left this city for--oh, God knows what. A holiday, maybe. Or a family gathering in their hometowns. Everyone was updating their social media from all over the world that I couldn't even keep up where each of them went. Instead of a 3-day family visitation in a small countryside like everyone else, I was here. In Jakarta. Shops closed, malls barely functioning (and I know this, because I went to the mall that Eid-ul Fitr evening since I was done with my family gatherings) supermarkets couldn't keep their promise of fresh fruits and vegetables, restaurants running out of ingredients and struggling to serve the overflowing of customers with limited waiters... There isn't much glory to this city when it comes to this holiday, and I was left wondering what would happen to Jakarta had none of these people come back. A real-life Walking Dead, I suppose.

So, this is why I understand that had I been born American, I wouldn't be supporting Donald Trump if my life depends on it. I probably don't really understand how immigrants feel like a threat in America, but I do know that you can't hope for a better future when you're not willing to co-exist with other people who don't look like you. I'm not even going to start with political or religious views here (because God knows it's become an issue here in Indonesia, too) but just start with people who look like us. My government always said it's trying its best to keep Papua in this country, but to what extent? Nobody's doing much for them. Those who live here, people like me, who look like me, probably first thought of them as a bunch of thugs. If we have no gun controls, it's probably only a matter of time before we also have a #BlackLivesMatter movement here around us. Because Indonesians--I don't know if you haven't noticed, but we are brutally hostile. No, we're not friendly. That's a propaganda your primary school teacher told you, the way they teach North Korean kids that Kim Il-Sung is a God. No, we're not friendly. We just like to believe we are. Or maybe we are... but only to people who look (and think, and dress) like us.

A Little Life

It is no longer a secret within humanity that life is short--perhaps even too short to experience all good things in life. There's always too many good movies to watch, too many good songs to listen, too many delicious cakes to enjoy... but if this year you are planning to read one--and only one--book, make it Hanya Yanagihara's sophomore novel A Little Life.

I don't know how to start talking about this book--not then, when I went straight to review it on Goodreads, and not even now, when it's been about a month since I finished reading (and weeping). I spent quiet a long time to finish, because there was no way life didn't happen during the course of the 700+ pages. I brought this book as a companion for my flight to Bangkok back in April, but it gave me a terrible sickness on the plane. I just couldn't--God, I don't know why! But I tell you this: this is the kind of book that stays with you; it lingers for a long time that I haven't even done feeling the aftermath. This is the kind of book that doesn't come too often in life. I haven't even lived my life long enough or read lots enough to know that, but believe me when I say that you are going to thank me for recommending me this book someday.

The story started out as something of a weird, retro image of four young men fresh out of a prestigious New England college. Jude, JB, Willem and Malcolm are going to be the main characters of the story, even though as the story developed, I feel like Jude was the sun, and everybody else was some planets that revolve around him. Granted, this novel is about Jude. I just wasn't convinced enough by reading the first twenty pages. At the end of the day, I feel like the main focus of the friendship should also involve Andy Contractor, their best friend and orthopedist who's also the only doctor in the world that Jude trusts his condition with.

Now, I knew even before I purchased this book that it's going to be a gruesome experience. It's an upsetting novel at worst, but also sweet and pretty John Green at best. What makes the whole story compelling is how Jude St. Francis (he's the sun, remember?) theoretically went full circle, through so much in his life, only to go back to the place where he started. Now, Jude is a ruthless litigator at a certain New York law firm. Nobody knows where he came from, what ethnicity he was, his sexual orientation, and he never ever mentioned his past. The present Jude is what everybody had. Now imagine how annoying to have a friend who only listens but never shares.

Jude battles a kind of self-waged war against himself every single day. He grew up being told that he does not deserve love, that he's unworthy of kindness, that he was made for a certain purpose. He was raised in a certain way that he believed that is what he is until the death of him. He's reluctant to feel love--any kind of love--from anybody because he think he doesn't deserve it. He pushes people away, even people who made it clear that they care about him, that they do not expect anything in return from him. When someone told him that they love him, he's convinced that it's only because they don't know him well enough; or the time hasn't come for them to see how terrible he really is, and that they would be disappointed to have loved him at all. Jude basically sabotaged himself into not feeling happiness at all.

The book could use some slightly better editing, but the words were so deep--sometimes philosophical--and beautiful, I wish I could frame them. I'll admit that it's a bit too long, but to cut any part of it will lessen the beauty of the little life that we're supposed to witness. We were given a chance to grow old together with Jude St. Francis; let's not make it not worth the while.