Metanoia

I'm the kind of person who regards a meaningful conversation as highly as a businessman sees money. My favourite books are the ones with quiet a few conversations so remarkable that I had to highlight them every so often. My favourite movies are all Before Sunrise-type; full of conversations, either deep or small, but lacks in anything else other than two people talking. My writings--they have no action, only talks. But you should know that I'm not a good conversationalist. In fact, I hardly ever start a conversation with someone, and even if I do, it usually end up to be awkward. But I love talking to people. I love exchanging spoken words with someone, because it's like opening another window to a new world. It's interesting.

And some conversations, as rare as it seems, went so deep and honest that it became remarkable and inspired an essay. Some of them happen in a bedroom, some on top of a mountain... and some happen in a seaside chocolate bar overlooking an endless ocean.

Remember when, three--almost four--years ago, I was a college freshman with broken dreams and longing to feel okay with the way that I am? When I wrote this post and thought that I know the first thing about not knowing where to go, wishing I haven't messed up my life beyond repair?

Remember?

Well, me neither. I'd like to think it was just a phase... But maybe the truth is, what I mean by phase is the state that I was in between that time and now. 

Because look at me now. Look how I still don't feel any different now. Or to be fair, how I've come back to square one.

I'm the kind of person who thinks that one should always be open for any possibilities. Theoretically, I'm an expert. I can be your go-to person to talk to about how life doesn't always go according to plans, how you could spend four years of college training to be an accountant and end up being a photographer, or how your degree in Russian lit doesn't always mean you will be a translator to some cold-blooded ex-communist men. I'd say, 'Oh, but life is so full of possibilities. What's interesting about life is that we never know what it has in store for us.' What a goddamn bullshitcliche.

The truth of the matter is, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to be the one who's in that scenario; when I'm the character instead of the observer. You see, I'm always that person who needs to be constantly reminded that: talk is easy. Because I'm awful at doing. I don't know how Aristotle had it; was he also only good at theorising and not at realising? Was he a pure philosopher who thinks but not do?

Paul Gauguin is one of the many people I'd consider a rockstar. For one, he's a legendary painter, and for that also held the curse of being a lousy lover. But I see him as someone who could do the thing that I wish I would have the courage to do someday; the thing I couldn't quiet fathom my obsession with; the thing that scares the hell out of me. 

I would like to believe that, like Gauguin, it is never too late to change your vocation. There is always time, just as much as there is always something you must sacrifice for the greater good. And maybe he didn't even know it was for a greater cause--maybe he just did it. Because he wanted to. Because he could. And he'd never looked back, because he was doing the right thing for him. Because he took a chance on himself and never feel sorry for it.

I guess it says something about me when my favourite quote is someone telling the story of how a stockbroker abandoned his family to become a legendary painter who suffered of syphilis in a Pacific island. I came to the point of thinking that everyone should be as brave as he was. I thought that nobody was born to something--they can always do something about it. Because the universe is limitless.

It's my own thoughts that limit me.

It's the voices in my head that do the talking, that sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be let alone with my own thoughts, especially--and I didn't say this lightly--my 3 AM thoughts. I may be thinking and worrying too much, but... how on earth do you not do that?

Preachy Writer on a Sunday

In a matter of a few weeks, I'm turning legally 21! Exciteddd.

So, before you proceed with reading, let me first warn you that this is one of those occasions where I'm going to be very preachy and talk a bit too much. So if you end up reading anyway, and you'll find that it's taking my tendency to be annoying to a whole new level, I'm just gonna tell you: told you so.

I've longed for the day when any parental consent is no longer required regardless of my actions. I always say I could not wait to grow up; which in part is true, because even though adulthood is scary, and complicated, and constantly nerve-racking, I always think that it is better to be more mature than who you really are than to stay being a kid forever. Because at the end of the day, cuteness ain't gonna pay the bills, honey! (Except if you marry rich, though. But that's not a privilege everybody has, because apparently, not everyone is an investment banker anyway, so.)

Well, not that I'm planning to do anything particularly 'adult', anyway. I've just been waiting for when whatever I say or do is no longer what people would take as a matter of immature whims. I'm probably still gonna make mistake and immature decisions, but at least with being absolutely legal, I can tell everyone that I was legal, and it was my decision, and tell them to back the hell off because it's my life.

I'm writing this post and shamelessly putting my heavily-edited office selfie for one reason and one only: I want to remind you all that, yeah, childhood is comfortable and nice and great, especially for us who were born outside of a war zone and blissfully to a loving family. But before you know it, there will come a day when you're going to wake up at 5 in the morning every weekdays (and some weekends too, perhaps) and pull yourself together, put on some make up, wear some decent (and appropriate) shirt and its combinations that could help you to look like you're taking yourself seriously, and just go to work. At the same station, doing the mostly similar paperworks, with the same regular people and blah blah. Oh, isn't life such a repetition, you might ask? Well, of course it is. 

And you might think that you're too young for this (as I still do), but there is no such thing as starting out too early. Our youth is the best time to start struggling with work; oh you know, long hours of sitting at the same desk, staring at the same computer screen, and making sure that you won't go insolvent by the end of the month just because online stores are your only kind of refreshments during lunchtime. But being young is also the right time to be ambitious---thanks to so much energy and the endless under-appreciation from senior co-workers---it is the time to prove yourself and be very, very selfish and ignorant, and all-around obnoxious, because you have to do yourself a favour and no one is gonna take you seriously if you are the same fun and humble person as you are with your closest peers. 

Awful, huh? Yeah, well... There are other options, really. You don't have to do what I'm doing. I guess I could take other options too, if I intended to. But as Kazuo Ishiguro once said, "There is another life that I might have had. But I'm having this one." I chose to choose it before it chooses me. Before it takes over my life. And before I'm going to start speaking about it with a hint of regret in my voice.

With/out Recourse

Too often, life is more of a multiple choice than an essay test. We don't always have to explain ourselves, but we do have to constantly choose between things. I believe we are the sum of the choices we made, and things that happened to us, are the results of them and it's really the only thing that can happen in our lives. So, take your pick. Make peace with your own choices. No regrets. Because there may not be a parallel universe. Because life without a series of "what ifs" would be so much better. 

When One Door Closes

...another opens.

One day, this picture...

 ...would look like this:

And when that day comes, we probably would have been away, busy on some mission to save the world in ways we couldn't imagine now. Because one day, superheroes aren't the ones Stan Lee created for us. One day, superheroes would be people like you and me; people who try to survive each day constantly making this world a better place to live in, just so that our great-grandchildren don't have to migrate to Mars. 

So until that day, here's to a world bigger and wider than we've ever seen. I'll see you on top of it.

A.

Happiness is an Underrated Word

When I was younger and emo—as in, a state of mind rather than sense of style/music/etc—I have this peculiar idea that turns out every single adolescent out there have had in mind, at least at point of their young lives: die young. There is something about adolescence that led us to think that dying young is nice; it's simpler, it's a shortcut to a more peaceful place, etc. And let's not forget some agent provocateurs who isn't necessarily pro life and promote short lives instead. I'm not talking about feeling suicidal here, it's a completely different issue because being suicidal is a much deeper and darker place that I have no rights to talk about. It's just about having that idea, you know? The idea that dying young would make everything easier.

Trust me, I've been there. So when I talk about this, even though I don't know each one of your problems that are probably even harder than mine, I actually know what it feels like. Oh sure, miss smartypants, it's always easier to say than done. I know that too. I know exactly by heart that saying is easier than doing. But let me just talk about it. For once. Because I've come from that place too, even though you won't believe it, but I did. I just don't live there anymore.

Let me tell you something. Chances are, when you are thinking that, it's only because you're sad. Because when you're sad, you see no ending to that sadness that you're feeling. People always say that the storm will pass, but when you're in middle of it, you don't know if it will; you can't see how it will end. But it will, eventually. When you finally feel happy again, you'd wonder why. Why would you think that dying young is happiness? There is still so much happiness to see in this life, that you haven't seen. I always remember the saying that just in time when you think you've seen it all, life can still surprises you. And I may not have seen so much, but I know it's true.

Here is how I view life: It's suffering. Sure, it sounds too philosophical and what are you, Plato? But life is suffering. We are all meant to suffer the entire time of our lives. Being sad is easy. It is so, so, easy. Trust me. Life can throw you so many bricks and you'll bleed. It is inevitable. But when life throws you bricks, but you can still get up and smile as if you've been hit by nothing, that is a choice. That is a brave choice. A very, very brave and strong choice. You may bleed all over the places you've been hit, but to still get up and smile, it's your choice. Bleeding, on the other hand, is not a choice. Do you see my point here?

Happiness is a choice. It is a brave choice. And people who live a long life; that old man at 92 who lives in his wheelchair and can still sing karaoke at old people gatherings, they are the bravest people that we should always look up to. At 92, pretty sure he's seen everything: the war, the ups and downs of a career, of his commitment to his family of wife and children, the rough times of getting his heart broken by disappointments in life that is just unavoidable, he's seen the worst. No one in their 20s should say that the old man has never gone through what they feel because he sure had, just maybe a different story, and a different era. And after losing so much, he would tell us, the ungrateful youth who think dying young is better, that having thought so is a disrespect to the people who actually lived a short life. Because we have so many choices. We can choose how we live our lives, we can choose to be happy, and we can even choose to end ourselves though it's highly not recommended. But people who die young—and lets not forget the unborn babies—they didn't have a choice. They weren't as lucky.

Because to live longer means that you have a chance to do more mistakes and learn from them; and then to fix them. How many of us ever thinking about fixing our mistakes? People make mistake everyday, even when you think you've had an easy day and everything was going smooth. But how many would actually try to fix those mistakes? How many actually have a chance to do so?

So, happiness is hard. It takes courage; a courage to choose, a courage to move past the  things that have let us down either we did it ourselves or not, and a courage to see the beauty of life past all of the concrete sufferings in life. A courage to believe that beyond all the misery, there is a prize worth living and fighting for. That is happiness. We always take it for granted, as if it was promised or as if it will come without us having to pursue it. But it's not. We choose it. We... strive for it. We work every day in our lives to get that happiness, even when we know how fleeting is could be.

Not choosing is a brave act too, I always remember that. But when you don't choose, eventually life will chooses you, and so your life is built on things that you didn't really want. The choices we made define us. We are defined by them, because that is how we want to live our lives. So if you don't choose, life will defines you. You will be defined by your own life, which isn't such a nice thing. But like I said, we have choices. We can choose to take that choice or leave it to life, because we're not ready to deal with the risks later; because we're not ready to find out that we did it to ourselves. We can always choose to be what kind of person we want to be, and what kind of life we want to live.

And I choose to be happy. Because it is a brave act, and because I'd rather be my own hero than waiting for someone to save me from myself. 

Further reading: The Things Happy People Know by Brianna Wiest

But you just don't see me

It's a truth that people have been secretly hiding, that the true happy people do not look outside the window every now and then, wishing they were somewhere else; wondering what could have been if they weren't to make decisions themselves. It's a truth universally known that decisions are made when we are tired of thinking---and the unhappy people are those with the most tired minds. I look outside my window at every different time of day; at six in the morning when it was grey and depressing, at one in the afternoon when the sun shines too strong for every eyes to see, at four or five during tea time when the ray of light gets weaker; just as much as all the tired people, and at nine in the evening when everybody's home with their loved ones; everybody has come to the place they want to rest their broken bones in. I hate my apartment. The altitude makes me see a lot of things that I cannot have; home, family to come home to, warm home-cooked meal, socialization, city lights. God, I even miss the traffic jam. I like being alone, but maybe, just maybe, not too much. It gets me to think that this is the most expensive price I ever had to pay; for being so stupidly choosing what I had chosen over other options that I had. I didn't have to smile if I don't want to. I didn't have to live alone sixty meters above the ground. I didn't have to do what I'm supposed to be doing right now; I didn't have to sign up for them. I didn't have to choose law school. Everybody knows smiles have to be genuinely from the heart. Everybody knows family home is the best place on earth while you still can't spare your own. Everybody knows no one is gonna care if I didn't sign up for anything. I should know that law school isn't for me; I'm not that dirty, not that tough, not that good in this. Everybody knows if you go to law school in Indonesia, it's not the same as you go to one in the States; only fools think it is. I should know that I wasn't build up to be a lawyer; I didn't think I have to win everything. Heck, I didn't even have to go to college. I could just make my way to wound up in the streets of Rome and be homeless but at least I'm happy. I could just quit school and sign myself up to be a roadie and be unmistakably poor but at least I'd love that. Why did anybody let me choose things for myself? Or maybe, I could just help myself not to read too much Sylvia Plath and teach myself to be depressed. That would've been easier.

I hope

I hope that some day, you find an amazing girl. The kind of girl who means everything to you and makes you want to spend every moment of your time with her. The kind of girl who keeps you up at night, just thinking about her beautiful smile, and when you finally fall asleep, she’s all you dream about. I hope she’s the first thing to cross your mind when you wake up in the morning. I hope she changes you in a way you could never understand, yet you know it`s for the better. I hope she’s the kind of girl you would die for. The kind of girl who could make you cry, even though you’d never admit it. The kind of girl who makes you want to go out and do something special, something that means everything to the both of you. The kind of girl you can have silly fights with, then kiss and make up and hold her in your arms like you`re falling in love all over again. I hope you make memories with her you never forget. I hope she’s your world, and what you have with her is nothing less than perfection. And I hope that one day, you lose her. I hope you mess up and as hard as you try to keep her there with you, she slips through the cracks of your broken heart. I hope it destroys you, because you realize you’ve lost the person you once called your everything. I hope you see every moment you spent together spin away down the drain like it was waiting to happen. I hope you stay up at night because she’s on your mind and when you fall asleep, she haunts your dreams. I hope her beautiful smile stays pressed in your mind like a scar that won’t fade away. I hope you realize that you’re a new person because of her, I hope your new self feels incomplete without her and you miss the old you. The one that was okay with being alone, because you’d rather be the heartbreaker than the heartbroken.

source

R.I.P Friend and Classmate Utha

my heart goes out to all family, friends, and whoever is left. keep alive. be strong. I believe he is smiling somewhere around. my prayers will always be his.

My Daddy, My Valentine

How was your Valentine’s Day, everyone? It might be too western, but, well I agree if someone says V-day is needed so that people can, at least once in a year, remember about love. I can say I didn’t celebrate it, but surely enough my Valentine this year is the most incredible man in my life, my father.

As I’ve told you before, my father is a very generous man. Something about him keeps me sane and makes me feel kind of safe. He might not make a bank at home, or a black belt in karate, but he protects his children in any way possible.

Anyway, we went out with my sister to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And I looove this film!

At first it was boring. On the schedule it was 14.00 sharp, but then this short movie with no dialogue presented by a whitening brand showed up for about 20 minutes. Turns out it was only two and a half hour.

It didn’t start boring like other Oscar movies. I remember not long after the opening, a character who made the clock ticking anti-clockwise saying, “I made it that way. Because I was hoping for some time to be back, so that some people who went and died in war could be back. I wanted my son to be back home safely, marry a woman, having a child…” which he got a really good respect for. People respect his idea. And soon after, he died of extreme mourn.

No review here, just… well, I’d like to say that it taught people a lot about life, and love. It’s pretty romantic, actually. But it scares me to death how it gave me the idea of a limited life, where you know that there’s always a limit for time that you can live. I finally realized how I’ve wasted my life doing trashy things, and that I don’t actually seize my days. Even so, it’s flattering to know that everyone is the same, we’re going the same direction. Me, you, all people related to us, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, Joe Jonas, Queen Elizabeth… Even Benjamin was going the same direction too. Not because we all end up in diapers, but, how we’re all alone.

Good news is, we’re all together in that loneliness too.

One of my best friends, Nadia, told me about this whole freaking idea of life and death (before I saw this movie):
”Lo pernah denger nggak sih? Katanya ya, waktu kita lahir, kita nangis sendirian sementara semua orang tersenyum, semua orang bahagia buat kita. Tapi saat kita meninggal nanti, semua orang bakal menangis dan berduka buat kita, sementara kita, semoga aja kita berhasil hidup dengan bener, bakal tersenyum sendirian. Pas gue denger itu, rasanya kayak, lega banget gitu. Kayak plong banget.”
Which I felt the same about. And I have a feeling that the person who said that has understood about the loneliness we’re all dealing with.

There are so many life lessons from Benjamin Button, so just see it. I don’t think it’s boring, I think it’s good. But then, good or bad is relative to everyone, so… I have no rights to say. But it’s definitely not a feel-good movie. You’d get out of the cinema feeling a little blue (if not dark).

One next thing about my V-day, is after dinner we’re heading to a CD store in Mahakam. We wanted to get the money back for the Rihanna ticket I’ve bought but it was too late so we have to come back the next day! No worries, no disappointment should appear on Valentine’s day. My Daddy bought me Oasis’ “What’s the Story? (Morning Glory)”. I love this album even though I never own it. Anyway I was only 2 when it came out. He knows I love this kind of bands, he’s the only one in the world who supports my worship to The Beatles. I think it’s a shame why I don’t worship musicians he recommended me like Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan or Alison Moyet. But I love Nat King Cole, though.

Even when I got home and my daddy received a call from my mother, who’s in Bali with my another sister, to tell that she (my sister) hit a car and had to pay some cash, he didn’t get angry. Well, he was, I could see it in his eyes. But I didn’t feel it, I didn’t hear anger in his voice. What a very loving man. My father is probably one of the reasons why I feel so lucky in this life, even though I don’t own a whole closet full of Manolos.