How "Full of Ourselves" we are

Humans is one of God's (if you believe one) unique creatures. We are blessed (again, if you believe that is such thing as  bless) with mind and IQ way higher than any other animals. 

We have body, soul, mental, and somehow, we all believe that we have hearts (don't we!?). I mean not the physiology one. It's the "feeling". Some of us believe that animals have it too. Through times, we are told that we are special creatures that walk with our two feet and touch and do stuff with our two hands. Unlike other primate, we call ourselves so advance that we create systems, we discover technology, and unfortunately, to the point where we can destroy everything we touch. 

The last seven weeks was like a roller coaster to me. I call it so alived (again) for so many times. But the highlight was at how I saw people's real colour with my very own eyes. 

I experienced what I call fall out of trust. I watched my dignity being destroyed before my very own eyes by the most trusted individuals (that I've just known for a short while). It felt so hurt that I didn't know if it's pure sadness or anger that played the big role in my reactions. You know it, when I call it reaction, it was always silence. Painful silence. 

Trust, dignity, integrity, lies, interest, carelessness, recklessness..

It all lead me to a new chapter where I met so many new friends (can I call them friends thou :p)

This group of people has helped me to detour from the "reality" for a short while every single day. I loved the moments, but I think it's too much now I'm just gonna call it an end for a while. 

You'd be surprised how much friendships I have made in this "online platform". It just painful reality that what we seek is actually acceptance and connection. Things that got disappear everyday in our daily life, in our real life actually.

I don't know...

Written on September 21. 

Memaafkan diri yang membenci

Hidup lebih dari 30 tahun, kini, hari ini yang kupelajari adalah; 

"Memelihara benci pada akhirnya akan membuatmu muak akan benci itu sendiri"

Menjadi manusia yang lahir dari manusia lain, hidup dengan manusia lain dan berinteraksi tumbuh berpapasan dan bersinggungan dengan orang lain, pada akhirnya entah bertumbuk dengan akhir baik atau dengan akhir buruk. Semuanya toh adalah pilihan hidup.

Bertumbuh dan bersosialisasi, kadang berujung sahabat,saudara, namun dengan menambah variabel waktu dan keadaan sulit, tak jarang berujung musuh dan menajdi orang yang kita benci. Sudah lumrah halnya dalam kehidupan berinteraksi dengan manusia, kita kadang menemukan ketidakcocokan.

Hari ini, setelah beberapa waktu bertemu lagi dengan orang yang dulu saya tidak senangi, akhirnya saya belajar menerima bahwa tidak semua orang menjadi jahat dengan sendirinya. Beberapa menjadi pahit karena keadaan dan karena tempaan hidup yang tidak menyenangkan. Setelah berjumpa beberapa jenis orang-orang yang keras dan pahit akan hidup, aku akhirnya tahu bahwa mereka pun sama saja seperti ku. Namun kadang keadaan dan cara manusia menanggapi aral dan sulitnya hidup akan merubahnya menjadi orang baru yang sulit dimengerti oleh orang lain.

Dari sebuah video yang baru saja kutonton kemarin, seorang ulama ternama di negeri ini yang tak jarang penuh kontroveri berujar bahwa cinta dan benci itulah seyogyanya sejalan. Benci adalah reaksi dari cinta kepada sisi satunya. Terlalu mencintai seseorang, tentunya akan membenci saat orang tersebut dihinakan. Kealpaan rasa marah saat itu terjadi justru jadi pertanyaan, apakah benar ada cinta di sana. 

Belakangan aku belajar bahwa benci tak melulu salah. Membenci toh sifat manusia. Namun, tetap saja benci adalah rasa yang berkembang jika si pemilik hati membiarkannya berkembang. 

Untuk itu, aku berazam dalam hati. Tak layak semua orang yang kujumpai untuk memperoleh perlakuan yang berdasar benci yang pada dasarnya sangat menghabiskan tenaga. Benci boleh, toh memaafkan jauh lebih mudah. dan kumemilih tuk melepas agar rasa ini tak membunuh hati.

Just a random "sad episode"

It's 5-7 minutes to 3 in the morning and I'm here sad and crying for no reasons. Well.. maybe it's my hormone, I don't know., or maybe it's the songs. And the screen.. the screen is me when I was young and happier (I don't know).

All this time, all the bless, it's not that I deny this all oh God,.. I'm just so lonely out of sudden. 

It's not that I'm being ungrateful. I'm just tired of hoping something I even have no guts to catch on. I'm tired of sending signs. It's been so long. And I feel like I'm over myself. It was just me who felt too much, assumed too far, liked so much that I lost my senses and logics. 

Now that I'm sure that I have to stay grounded and finally believe that this is the end of "hoping", I felt so bad and hurt and so not deserving. I am sooo broken by my own thought and selfishness. 

All the talks and words were just an act of politeness and kindness, and what was I thinking? I was such a fool! I was such a fool!

Now, I should leave this all behind. A friend once told me, "Oh come on.. you're too much. No one stupid enough like you wasting so much time on something so uncertain". I admitted then, I admit it now. I am so stupid. 

Thinking about how I might die someday, and leave no trace behind, no some beautiful stories, I'm crashed in pieces, Oh Allah... help me...
Getting older and older by day, and later when I am too weak.. Oh so sad.. so miserable..
Oh Allah, help me, I can't stop..

The small things in life

On my way to work that evening, I listened to Simon Sinek's talk on one of Spotify's podcast. It struck me that the very ideas of having a better life lie on 5 motivational rules in life.. 

Here are what he mentions in the podcast

1. Go after the things that you want
2. Sometimes, you are the problem
3. Take care of each other
4. Learn to speak last
5. Humility; the concept of every one of us actually only deserves a Styrofoam-cup for coffee

I do admit that it's pleasing and spirit-moving to listen. It is indeed motivational, but it's hard.
All the points above are actually skills to keep on practicing and they need a constant maintaining.

I just finished a short trip 2 days ago, and tonight somehow, I end up reminiscing old memories when trying to find old photos from the same place. And this relates to the point no.3 about how to take care of each other. It's about emphasizing with people close to you. 

I struck upon different groups of friends, come and go. And I find a heart-warming video of me laughing so hard while acting silly and my friends around me say nothing but laughed together. I remember how happy we were that day in the mushala. Ya Allah.. I miss these people, I'm crying. I miss my friends. I miss my supporters. They did the best for me in life I can't never thank them enough. 

I am crying looking back at all I had and experienced in life, MashaAllah. I have been blessed, but I don't think I have done what supposed to done as a pious muslim. 

Truly this writing is a mess..

I should just stop..

On the verge of freedom of information

I have just watched The Fifth Estate; a movie about how Wikileaks was started and mostly about how leaks_secrets are so powerful and at the same time so dangerous either it is to be kept or to be leaked. I am not going to talk about the political aspect about how the website works. Rather, I am talking about how "secrets" are better kept secrets.

And just last night, just like any other occasions, I was furious at my mom when she revealed my "secrets". She asked my niece about things I told Mom about her. She confirmed it, asked my niece about my opinion whether it was true or not. Though nothing was so outrageous happened about it, it's still nuisance to me. I recalled, she also did it the last time with my brother. I was upset of the things he said about me. I went to my mom crying, telling her, well.. mostly about how hurt I was because of that, but my mom decided it is more about "the words he said" rather than "the damage the words caused to me".

Secrets are "known about by only a few people; kept hidden from others" or used to describe actions and behaviour that you do not tell other people about"_both definition are from Oxford Learner's Dictionary.

Secrets are things we always try to keep either from ourselves or others. There are no good in secrets.
We all have that dirty little secrets about ourselves or painful secrets about people around us. But, do we really need to reveal them? I don't know. There are a part of this movie that I agree on; maybe, it is manufactured that way to control the like-minded people like me. I agree about how it ends. It's when Daniel screwed Julian at the end and cancelled the "leaks". I agree on the ideas that sometimes, big secrets bring more harm than good. I agree that sometimes, even when sacrifices need to be made for greater good, the damages can be too harsh for most of us.

In our daily life, sometimes we know someone close to us were so innocent about their husband "affair". Some kids know nothing about their mother/ father dirty secrets. We may know someone who are the children of government corrupt, but somehow we managed to pretend to know nothing about it. And let's called it secrets. Those are the secrets that we keep for a better purpose, to maintain good relationship, to keep someone "safe". Or.. is it wrong to do it that way.

I remember I know someone who saw a friend fiancé of hers went out with another woman just two weeks before he's getting married. She kept that secret dear to her heart until.. Until that friend marriage was broken in pieces and that friend of hers in the verge of hell in life. The secret was considered too late to be revealed? We never know. Say, she knew it earlier that she was about to marry unfaithful man, would she believe it? Would she consider it "a help" or "a threat"? Nobody knows.

Today, life's is unprecedented due to the fast exchange of information. Everyone gets to know everything they want in a single type of their fingers.. or their thumbs. Scandals, dirty political secrets, conspiracies, corruptions, are our daily feed for our little brain and weak hearts. They were there to be the limits for people to stay on their moral radar at all time. But.. do we have to mind these all when it brings more harm to our "trust" on goodness. Don't we have to have a little bit of skeptical attitude every now and then? I don't know.

Freedom of information is a thing nowadays. People feed on more facts about everything around the globe every single day than they were 20-30 years ago. And somehow, were most of us, are not ready about it. We grasp too early, conclude too fast, believe too innocently to everything served on our "plates of information" without even questioning, "Is it true? Is it really relevant? Is it really important?". We meet people whose background are economics, but talk about pandemics and viruses as if they were virologists. We encounter teachers who speak about politics as if they're willing to leave their underpaid-jobs to be the next politicians. We even see politicians who talk about morals as if they were saints.. as if they were sooo true.

I don't know.. I don't know what we should do really? What I know is that, it is wiser to keep track on what you can control rather than minding things beyond your control. It is more energy-saving for you and me to mind what we can mind rather than talking "too big" it may sound like bullshits.

On my search of good quote about the danger of secrets, I find the following quote relevant;

"We all have secrets we keep locked away from the rest of the world... Friendships we pretend... Relationships we hide... But worst of all... Love we never let show. The most dangerous secrets a person can bury are those we keep from ourselves."

and at the same time, the same person who said that also said this line;

"Truth is a battle of perceptions. People only see what they’re prepared to confront. It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see. And when then different perceptions battle against one another, the truth has a way of getting lost. And the monsters find a way of getting out."

To you that I kept hurting, I am truly sorry

It runs perfectly fine this week, but this night somehow, I feel that something feels off. I don't know what it is, but it feels tight on my stomach like something just went wrong. It could be just my excessive sugar intake or maybe not enough caffeine today.

All the time when  I feel like this, I always had the ideas at the back of my head that maybe I did someone wrong. and all the mistakes I did to people. I did wrong to people, and no matter how much I said sorry, the bad feelings somehow flash in my mind and "sorry" would be understatement to say the least.

For the kind and sincere guy I met on 2008. I told about you to one of my colleagues today. How are you today? I remembered how kind you were cooking Udon for me. I still feel that I don't deserve your kindness you did for me on that embarrassing incident  on our road trip. It was so sweet and kind I don't think there's no other guys would do the same decency like you did. So many times, I 'd like to say the biggest sorry to you. I wasn't supposed to be that mean. I treated you so bad. I was so young and stupid and I had so much fear in my life that time. But still, I should not be that harsh to you.. Hey you, my kindest friend. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

For you one of so few who dared say the "impossible words" to me. You had no idea how I felt so great about myself that time. You made feel "enough". You made feel I deserved to be liked, to be looked upon. But I was so young and full of fear. I irritated your pride. My words didn't reflect my actions. I hurt you. Sorry would never be enough. I'm sorry that I was so full of myself that I didn't even bat an eye when I decided to hurt you. Sorry.

For all the stupid things I have done to you, I do believe that I have experienced the "karma".

And again I say, I am so sorry...

December 2, 2021