Freedom

To me, freedom derives from choices; choices to do or be one thing over the other. I think I am free now. Yet, I sleep a little too late and wake up a little too early. My time is a little too short, my body is a little too tired, and my wallet is a little too thin for a vacation. So, I am a little less humane and a little too mechanistic than ‘free’ human beings. 

Then, I asked myself, “Am I a slave?”

From all the books that I have read, all teachers that I have learned from, and all things that I have experienced, I think, freedom comes from abundance or hard work—which is the opposite of freedom itself. 

In college, the students are freer than the ones in high school. They are free to go to class or not, to do assignment or not, and to study or not (without being treated as running away criminals). They have choices whether to be lazy or not. That is freedom. However, at the last semester, they have to sacrifice their sleep to study, they have to understand the lesson if they wanted to pass the subject. That is absolutely the opposite of freedom.

Workers have a choice to quit their job and claim their freedom to sleep, read, hang out, travel, and do anything they want for the rest of their life. That is freedom. For a little while, they will run out of money. Then, they will be desperately in need for a job. That is not freedom.

People are free to smoke, to do drugs, to eat junk food and to sit on a couch all the time. That is freedom until they were diagnosed with severe illness. Then, they are deprived from all of those things that they like. In fact, they have to do certain exercises or therapies and have daily or weekly check up with a doctor. 

Are people free to choose whom to marry or they have no other choices since no one else (good enough) wants them so that they choose the least bad candidate?

It is from intelligence and discipline you can choose whether to sleep or hang out in final weeks of the semester. 

It is from wealth you can choose sleeping or travelling at any given day. 

It is from good health you can choose to eat junk food or sweets. 

It is from a high quality life you can choose a high quality person to marry—since a low quality person can only attract high quality person on movies.

We can never be free. There are visible and invisible strings that bind us, but some are freer than others.

A crippled bird cannot walk, a broken-winged bird cannot fly, a caged bird can fly a little, and other birds can fly only in a certain height. Some birds can fly higher than other birds but all birds cannot fly high enough to go beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

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This idea came to me when I was fueling my gas. I always choose the gas station that is on my left side (so that I do not have to cross) and less long-queued, at least 2 or 3 bikes queuing. I always had enough gas so that I could skip and choose.  Yet, at that time I was running out of gas. Then I saw a gas station that was on my right side and there were about 15 bikes queuing. I did not have any choice.

Peka

Peka

Dalam satu hari, aku dapat melihat banyak hal. Ketika berkendara, aku melihat sekumpulan orang yang membangun gubuk, kemungkinan tidur dan makan juga, di antara timbunan sampah. Kemudian, di rumah, aku melihat pemberitaan di televisi mengenai kasus kekerasan seksual—ditambah pembunuhan—pada anak dan perempuan yang sudah seperti jamur di musim penghujan. Akupun bertanya-tanya, “Kok bisa gitu sih?”

Kemudian, aku ingat cerita tentang alegori katak dalam air panas. Intinya kira-kira seperti ini, “Jika kita memasukan seekor katak ke dalam panci berisi air yang sudah mendidih, pasti dia akan langsung melompat ke luar; sedangkan jika kita memasukannya ke dalam air dingin yang sedikit demi sedikit kita panaskan, katak itu akan beradaptasi sampai airnya mendidih dan ia pun mati”.

Mitos ataupun fakta, menurutku yang penting adalah nilai yang bisa dipetik dari alegori tersebut. Salah satu mekanisme primordial pertahanan hidup sel adalah dengan cara beradaptasi dan menyesuaikan diri dengan lingkungan dan keadaan. Inilah salah satu alasan mengapa ada orang yang dapat membangun gubuk di antara pegunungan sampah. Aku yakin tidak ada orang yang dapat bersantap dan terlelap di sana dengan seketika. Awalnya, mungkin mereka akan merasa mual, lama-kelamaan, karena terbiasa, merekapun sudah tidak peka lagi terhadap bebauan yang sudah menjadi bagian dari keseharian mereka. Mungkin bila aku ada di posisi mereka, akupun akan mampu beradaptasi.

Film biru pun seperti itu, seorang anak lelaki berusia 13 tahun yang baru pertama kali menonton film itu kemungkinan besar akan merasa jijik. Beberapa saat kemudian, dia mulai terbiasa dan bosan dengan adegan ‘biasa’; akhirnya, batas toleransinya akan meningkat, dia tidak akan merasa puas jika hanya menonton adegan yang ‘biasa’. Saat itu dia akan mencari kategori film yang ‘luar biasa’ dan akhirnya tidak akan merasa puas apabila hanya menonton.

Rokok juga seperti itu, ketika pertama kali merokok, teman SMA-ku pingsan dan muntah-muntah setelah menghisap sebungkus rokok dalam satu hari. Hal itu terjadi karena tubuhnya masih peka terhadap racun rokok. Semakin lama, bagaikan katak yang sudah terbiasa, dia pun dapat menghabiskan satu hingga dua bungkus rokok dalam satu hari dan merasa sangat bahagia. Si Katak mulai merasa nyaman dalam air yang membunuhnya secara perlahan.

Kekerasan dalam Rumah Tangga (KDRT) pun kurasa seperti itu. Katakanlah pihak pria yang melakukan KDRT. Ketika dalam masa pendekatan, bila Sang Pria langsung memaki dan memukul pasangannya, hampir pasti Sang Wanita akan langsung meninggalkannya. Namun, pada kebanyakan kasus, hal ini terjadi secara bertahap. Sesaat sebelum menikah atau pada usia pernikahan yang masih muda, Sang Wanita mungkin merasa bahwa pasangannya agak kasar, namun—dengan kepercayaan bahwa dia akan berubah—dia tetap bertahan. Akhirnya, setelah sekian lama, agresifitas Sang Pria akan semakin meningkat seiring dengan meningkatnya batas toleransi Sang Wanita. Hingga Sang Wanita pun akhirnya menyadari bahwa batas ketahanan tubuhnya tidak lebih tinggi daripada batas toleransi psikisnya.

Terakhir, apakah Anakin Skywalker semerta-merta berubah menjadi Darth Vader? Apakah dia langsung bergabung dengan ‘Kegelapan’? Ataukah perubahannya terjadi secara bertahap, di mana kepekaan semakin berkurang dalam setiap kenaikan tahap-tahapnya.

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Berbeda dengan Sang Katak, aku terlahir dalam panci yang berisi air. Aku beranjak dewasa dalam panci itu. Mungkin airnya makin panas, mungkin makin dingin. Aku tidak tahu. Satu Celsius takkan terasa. Mungkin aku akan tahu di akhir nanti, tapi mungkin sudah terlambat.

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Why I Waste My Time on Writing

Why I Waste My Time on Writing

One of many things that I do not like about myself is that I am so forgetful. I have been trying to retain my precious knowledge and childhood memories only to find out that everything has run like a handful of sand and a gnawed leaf. That is, I think, one of the reasons why I bother wasting my time trying to manifest my thoughts to words.

I am aware that writing—just like remembering—is actually an act of creating instead of projecting reality from one mode into another. I am, however, okay with the approximation of it. I think I would be so glad to look back to it from different perspective when I am old—if I lived long enough.

I see my writing as a camera that captures moments. Even though the photographs are not the best and high-definition ones—even crappy sometimes—it is all I have got and I am grateful for that. This is my crappy old camera that I rely upon besides my small-sized-full-of-viruses memory card that frequently engulfs my precious contents I tried to keep.

I am surprised, most of the time, when I saw the images that I captured. Anything that I tried to capture—a beauty or crap—ended up being a crap or a worse crap. Maybe it is because the actual moment has been filtered through my limited senses and manifested by my limited linguistic resources. Anyway, it is a special kind of ‘worse’, though. This is my own ‘worse’, not anyone else’s ‘worse’ or even ‘best’.

At times, I do free-writing which I use as a mirror through which I see my reflection. There are so many things that I am unaware of about me. Thus, my writing is also a kind of selfie that I took and then inspected. I might be jolted by what I found. Sometimes, it is some parts in my face that I thought were not there, sometimes, it is a complete stranger’s face that scares me.

What a thrill!

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The Current

I am not considering myself a traveler or backpacker since I do not travel a lot. Anyway, I enjoy almost every time I travel—alone or with companion. Some of the time, I felt ecstatic when I saw the sun rise and set whether I was at a beach, mountain, or city I traveled. I was captivated by that moment. I literally paused and enjoyed the beauty of it. I know it sounds cliché, but that is the moments when I felt a strange kind of completeness and peace. Not only did I feel it when I saw the sun, but also when I woke up there, despite of having ‘panda’ eyes from a very instant sleep.

It makes me wonder, how come I felt completely different in my ‘normal’ day. I am the same person; the sun is the same sun; I breathe the same air and feel the same wind caressing my face. 

I want to have more of those moments. The moment when I looked at the sun at the horizon as I mumbled, ‘Good morning’, without lying about the ‘good’; the moment when I speak, ‘Good afternoon’, sincerely even though I felt so tired; and closed my eyes with the ‘Good night’ as I looked forward to catching up with tomorrow.

I lost the beauty of the present because my eyes kept looking at the future. 

It is as if I was in a meadow, walking and walking straight toward an unknown point. All the time, I worried too much about the path that I walked on, whether it was bumpy or slippery. I failed to realize that there are so many beautiful flowers and nice places at the sides. I did not know that there is nothing but a cliff at the end of the path. 

I realize that I had lived my entire life unconsciously. I failed to notice the beauty of anything around me. I cursed the sun that burnt my skin, the rain that dampened me, the weather that was too hot, the fact that I had to wake up so early, the lack of sleep, failed relationships, almost all the things. 

I distanced myself from anything that is 'not me'. 

I was too busy judging things, and people, as ‘nice’ and ‘not nice’ based on my personal preferences—which mostly turn out wrong. Falling from a bicycle that I labeled ‘not nice’ was actually a turning point when I could finally ride a bicycle. Being broke and dependent on public transportation for years—which I thought ‘not nice’, is actually one of the best moments for I could finish my assignments and read many textbooks and novels.

I demanded that life should be this and that. I did not know that I am the part of life. I am a drop of water in a great current of The River. I tried so hard to swim against the current and then failed and depressed. It is all just a thought that differentiates happiness with depression; a thought that can pause me to look at the beauty of life in my brief existence.

I am trapped in the current. I have no control whatsoever to move against the current since I am part of the current, in fact, I am the current. I, however, have some controls over where and how to look, and of course, how to respond.

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