Author: arlanadya

… of emotions this week. From going up to the euphoria of the long awaited badminton gold winning in Olympics, then free dive to the the shitty days of daily life, then slowly climbing to the joy of watching how little one nailed her first repclass.

As someone who loves boring mundane kind of life where everything goes under control, riding on this kind of ride was totally not pleasant. It felt so heavy when it took extreme change to the ground and totally insecure when the ride suddenly rocketed high up to the sky. Dive down to the ground makes you extremely sick while soaring high to the sky makes you dizzy.

I came to learn about myself since I was in primary school, when I was in the 4th place in class, the highest that I had ever been and turned out to be the happiest.

What so special about being fourth? It doesn’t even have any medals name for it. But, being the fourth made me noticed enough without being on the spotlight. Being the fourth means I was very good in certain things but just an ordinary one in certain subjects. It made me feel safe and secured. Knowing I didn’t have to be good in everything, which nobody did, but knew very well that I got and did the other thing well and right. That was why my roles in class were mostly the secretaire or the treasure, which both I did with so much love and enthusiasm.

I couldn’t handle being on the spotlight too much like those ones on the top three, yet I didn’t feel good at all to be where I was not seen enough. Being on the top made the teachers came back to you all the time, not good for the heart. While being fourth gave some space to show yourself when you were really good at something without too much pressure.

Maybe the only spotlight I could resist when it was on other people where I stood right behind it. Like the badminton coach on the side of the field whom the players ran into once they confirmed the victory. Like when I had my students with the trophies in 5 times out of 5 piano competitions I had ever been. That was the time when I felt the most satisfied. The hardworks paid off, the thank you notes, yet no obligation to handle the publicity.

The shitty days in life described well how I disliked being too far from the top where I didn’t feel seen enough, where I felt I wasn’t treated important enough, just like another student fill in the class without no exceptional traits. Totally not kind of feeling I could deal with for long.

Watching the little girl playing in her first repclass and a sudden simple text from the old student, reached out for me, were the cure to those shitty days.

Repclass is where the students from two teachers gathered and gave short performance. It was only four students yet it was a good opportunity for her to see how others played. She nailed her two songs nicely and safely. Her teacher gave her 83 for each song she performed with some detailed comments on what she has done well and the area she still needs to improve. I thought that was the number she deserved for her current ability and I was totally glad with that.

But, on the other hand, I would give her 90 for her emotional aspects. How calm and composed she was dealing with the pressure of performing in front of others, how well she responded to the instruction in Bahasa Indonesia without any helps, and how well she controlled her self in playing those two pieces in spite of some tiny dents she made.

Watching the little girl yesterday, this time I didn’t feel like a coach on the side of the field. It was more of riding on time travel tunnel. Like it was there to show me an alternative scenario. What kind of life it would be if I were a student who never lose a day to practice, who had the privilege having personal coach at home so I didn’t have to figure out things on my own. The repclass yesterday showed a truly significant difference of having such things, despite the tools used for practice.

A personal text message from a parent of an old student with a video of her child playing some higher level piece was a mood booster. Said she just sent it to me to check if my number was still on and asked me how life was. The child had been with other teachers before she was sent to me, told that she was lazy, too hard to handle, and many things. I was with the child for few years, it was as hard as the other teachers said but it got better with time. Gave her quite hard times during the lessons was unavoidable, but unless it was something criminal, I never give up any students.

Watching her keep playing until now, knowing her mother spared some time to text me and showing her progress, that was when Maya Angelou words came true :

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

After a whole week full of rollercoaster ride, it slowly return to the equilibrium point.

Or so I hope.

Few years ago, there were things that I really didn’t understand completely. But, again, life has been very kind and allows me to reach the point where I finally understand those things. Here are some of my favorite paradoxes.

“Less is more” when it comes to material things, is finally be understood when you are in the position of more, but never when you’re in the less one. What money literally can buy is pleasure. Food, things, experiences. Will the pleasures make you happy? It’s debatable. Then, knowing and defining your enough are important. These ones are not characters, they are skills that should be learned, if possible mastered. Without that, you’ll never know when to stop and that’s the root of all evil.

Less sugar means more health . In the opposite sense, less sleep means worse health.

“To have an ‘easy life’ in the future means you have to make hard choices in the present”. The opposite will happen if you replace the order.

To think for a long term means you have to beat yourself and working on the shortest period of life. Day to day. A huge change (good or bad) happens in one day of someone’s life, most of the time happened from years of waiting and hardworks full of failures (or years of not doing things properly if it is the opposite).

“The more you learn, the more you realize how very little you know”. Knowledge is limitless. Your time to learn things is not.

Also, you’ll learn more doing things that you don’t-like-but-you-have-to than doing one you like and you want to. Being uncomfortable means you face many possibilities of learning that you won’t get with being comfortable.

That’s why I don’t believe in the phrase ‘anak jangan dipaksa-paksa’. In order to know their limit, they have and need to be pushed for the right amount to the right direction. They have to be uncomfortable. Our job as parents is to give them experiences where they can learn things they need later to live their own life. They need to be equipped to face the real jungle out there. To do this, it’s not comfortable for everyone but the more it feels uncomfortable, the more it shows that you are doing the right thing. It is important because the most important ability a child to master is the ability to live without their parents.

Disclaimer : this one is applicable in learning some useful skills, not staying in abusive relationship.

Talking about these paradoxes reminded me with similar thing which is one way of thinking that I have been using since the first time I lived without my parents. It is called inversion.

Inversion is a method for thinking about a problem differently. To solve a problem, instead of think of linear solution, we think about the opposite. Sometimes, to solve a problem, you need to think and see differently. It requires you to look at things from a different angle to embrace a new perspective.

At that time, by doing inversion, literally and figuratively, observing certain things for days, I managed to change my gloomy daily morning trip to school became a happy one.

Before, I needed to leave my grandma’s house at the very least 5.15 am if I wanted to arrive at school on time. I needed to take around 1,5 hours trip by crazily full bus and continued with high-demand-low-capacity angkot. There were many days where I needed to fight for a tiny empty seat because they didn’t want to take schoolers since they paid less than worker passenger. I could and wanted to pay full price, but it was hard when the driver already saw me with school uniform. There were days when I insanely hung tightly on the door of the angkot because I had no choice. There was also a minibus called Kopaja. They welcomed schooler but the problem was their service was not any better. For me it was even worse than angkot because the petite me had to be trapped among so many taller and bigger people and it made so difficult to get out when I arrived at the school. At times, I had to walk longer because the driver didn’t hear my request to stop.

Do not imagine it was like what we have now where almost all public transport are with air conditioner, only stop at the bus stop, and rarely jammed with people. It was hot, packed until there was no room to breathe well, full of odour that made you dizzy, and you felt like getting out of utter mess once you got off. There were days when it felt so frustrating because went through that daily was beyond exhausting.

It kept going like that until I did a little observation for days about the route of the bus. I couldn’t depart earlier anymore (how early an 13-yo should go to school than 5.15am? Departed at such hour it means I woke up at least an hour before!). I also couldn’t afford to go by taxi daily, I couldn’t find any other alternative transportations, I couldn’t find any other routes to go to the school other than what I had been through.

But then, I finally found something through the opposite way of thinking.

The result was incredible. I managed to cut the length of trip from one and half hour to 30 minutes. Instead of following the bus to the end of the route and fought with employees to get on that rare angkot or being sardened in morning kopaja, I managed to find that this bus passed a bus stop that sent me to the school through the opposite direction and it was actually only 10 minutes away from my departure bus stop. Then I could continue with the same that high-demand-low-capacity angkot, only this time, I had the whole empty angkot for myself, waved goodbye to traffic jam, and had chance to do a little bit of morning walk through the pedestrian bridge since I came from the opposite way.

At that time, I went to school daily accompanied by a big brother cousin who had to send me until I got on to the angkot. After that, he went to the office where it was on the opposite location of my school. My school on the south, while his office was on the north. So, that daily morning trip to the school was not only hard for me but also for another person.

When I proposed the idea that I had found another much shorter route to the school, he looked hesitant. But, because I was so persistent and asked to him to see this first, he gave up and followed.

When he finally saw the route, he looked as happy as I was. It meant that he had more time to go to his office leisurely. It showed how a little thinking could improve everyone’s well being drastically.

Isn’t it a literal meaning of inversion? That was one of my eureka moments as an 13 year old. Solving my own problems, although it was so simple, but it went beyond that. It changed my whole mood drastically. It made me study better and felt so much happier.

Another thing that reminded me of doing this kind of thinking was when I managed to find ways to send the whole family to this trip. The paradox of less is more and inversion thinking were truly applicable here. The less money you had for the things you desperately want, the more active your brain in finding solutions to achieve that. Since earning more money or sign up for debt wasn’t applicable at that time, finding ways to reduce cost became the solution.

Inversion is also applicable in other kind of situations. For example, like the famous Charlie Munger said about wealth and investing : it is not about earning more, but the rules is to never lose money.

In parenting, there many things that I don’t know, like what kind of life that my little girl will have or what a kind of person she will grow up to be, but I know what kind of life I don’t want her to have and kind of person I don’t want her to grow up to be, so I started from there.

We don’t always know what we want so it’s easier to go from the things that we don’t want.

If I think about it, I am doing quite a lot of inversion and paradox in daily life. Like when it is fasting day, instead of laying low to not tiring myself and just doing little simple things, I found myself on the opposite by doing more than the usual. Instead of feeling low, I found my energy is higher than usual during fasting day.

Closing quote from the famous wise man book The Republic :

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Plato.

A sudden call from hospital made the doctor packed his things and went to the hospital, the sleeping eyes woke up after short sleep and refused to go back to sleep again.

Disturbed sleep is tricky. It makes your mind wander more wildly. From watching live coverage of Hajj 2021 to reminiscing certain part of old memories through pictures and videos collections, yet nothing can really make the eyes go back to sleep instantly.

This week has been a pretty draining one. Continous sad news, first week of online school which as expected, it was a quite a headache. So much energy taken yet so little learning. With such crappy internet connection and the noise from many little kids and their background noise, what can we expect?

But, let’s leave it there for now.

The heart goes to so many families whose days has been beyond tough this week. Especially the little children and babies who suddenly lost their mother. Also, the girls in college or school who suddenly had no choice other than dropping their study and taking over the responsibilities at home because the passing of their mother, I wanted to say I had been there (with similar situation), but the other part of myself told me to shut up and snapped,

“You’ve never been there”.

There’s no words of encouragement is needed at this time.

Current situation is as sad as it can be.

As bad as it looks like.

As heart-breaking as it is.

I am sending them the biggest hug they might need.

Let’s cry together until we feel better.

Been having long rants about how this country official handling this pandemic.

Been cursing the way they deal with this matter since the beginning of this pandemic last year.

Everytime I heard people saying “semoga pandemi cepat selesai”, I couldn’t help sneering. It won’t. Judging from everything that has been happening since last year, it will last much longer than we think or we hope it will be.

It’s no longer the virus that kills. It’s the ignorance of the leaders that even after more than a year, they learn nothing, they do nothing, they NEVER take this seriously, and choose to let people die deliberately with their incompetence.

Up until now, we’re still paying the price of (choosing) having such minister of health for the whole first year of the pandemic. Choosing that person to be the minister of health was weird already and did nothing, (while he could something) until months, that’s the trigger of the tragedies that we are currently dealing with.

And, sadly, we’ll keep paying for this until God knows when and at what price.

This pandemic discloses and brings out the worst and broken system in every aspect of this country. We are broken till the last layer. There’s nothing we do right to the smallest thing.

Social services corruption. Birthday party full of people. Unnecessary bussiness meeting while people down there are looking for hospital rooms everywhere, stupid heartless brainless statements everyday saying those people of house representative deserved a special treatment in hospital if they need it. The paid vaccine. The disaster PPKM without proper help. The last one came today. The news told that the daughter of one of the chief for pandemic handling as well as one of the ministers whose face we could see everywhere around the town, was captured in Japan. Currently enjoying the honeymoon.

Feel like throwing up and put this line below in bold :

Eneg and muak are the terms to describe the feeling towards this stupid useless heartless brainless people up there.

Why cant they only be stupid but not ignorant?

Why can’t they just choose one?

Why cant they only be brainless but not heartless?

Whyyyyyyyy.

Maybe, just maybe, we must have done something terrible to deserve such stupid useless ignorant heartless brainless nir-empathy zero capabilities government in dealing with this pandemic.

No words could describe how screwed it is to be the citizen of this country during this pandemic.

• 

Current situation makes a mixture of feelings.

Too depressed to stay sane.

Too guilty to feel okay.

Too hopeless to do something.

The heart goes to everyone who’s currently dealing with any difficulties, struggles, pain and sickness.

May you have the strength you need to get through everything.

This June feels so much longer than the whole year. It’s been raining for weeks. The situation outside is bad and unfortunately, the inside one is pretty heart-breaking too.

At the beginning of this year, I have known that 2021 would be tens times tougher than 2020. Only no idea how tough is tough. But maybe, things that happened so far up until 25 days of June could show it.

The virus started getting closer to the closest inner circle possible. It started with an uncle. He has been staying in the hospital for almost a month. Few weeks in ICU, and thankfully he’s recovering. Hopefully, he could return safely home soon.

It was only two days ago when June striked with another news. This time is my father. There were so many mixed fellings towards this news. Angry and frustrated were two of them.

Angry because I had, continously, repeatedly, giving him reminder, warning, or whatever you call it, to not take things for granted. To not overlooked the vaccine he receieved, to not loosen the guard by going to the places that potentially give him a chance to contact the virus. I told him not to go to the mosque anymore, not to go to the office, because he has that choices. I was angry because he kept doing all those despite witnessing everything that happened .

But more than angry, the frustration is bigger. Because there’s almost nothing I can do to help. I could help with helping some instructions but,really couldn’t anything more than that. One thing that is still being grateful for, he’s been fine so far. Almost no symptoms.

At the day we received the news at night, we planned to visit his house in the afternoon. The old carpet in the living room was sent for laundry and I needed another. I was thinking whether to buy new one or to take my old carpet from the storage at my father’s. Finally we decided we would look the new one first within the budget at the store downstairs, then if we didn’t find any, we would go there.

We found a good one at the store with reasonable price so we canceled the plan to visit his house.

But, the rain didn’t stop there. The following day, the doctor receieved some news that two of his colleagues whom he met in the common room last Monday tested positive. For countless times, he signep up for another PCR test yesterday. The result came this morning and if there’s any words bigger and higher than gratitude, I will use it for every negative result that we have receieved so far.

These days, we need more of negativity than positivity in a literal meaning.

There was one question asked by the little girl one day,

“Mommy, why do you do your last sujud so long?”

It‘s been more than a year, having the doctor deal with (covid) patients daily in the hospital, which something that we couldn’t opt out, whether in London, especially in Jakarta, the only choice other than doing things that we can control, is asking for The One who has control on everything, for the utmost protection from any dangers, any diseases, our own unintended mistakes and also…

Other’s negligence.

My sujud won’t get any shorter until further notice.

Stay vigilant and stay safe.