Category: Thoughts

The best time of the day happened in the dark and quiet room accompanied by the sound of air purifier.

Time to have solo conversation about things inside the head. Time to talk to the One who takes care all affairs. Time to ask for some strength to deal with anything that comes today. Time to take as much as deep breath before running the morning sprint.

Whenever the self-doubt thought is visiting, questioning whether it’s the right thing to do, an instant answer of yes heard in the head.

“This is the sowing period. It supposed to be hard and messy. It takes patience trimming this and that, adding some fertilizers here and there, setting the environment now and then, to make sure the plant grows well. Don’t be confused and let the sowing period slip away because you want early harvest. The reaping period will come when it’s ready”.

I wish the early morning silence could stay longer a little bit.

But, one should do what s(he) suppose to do.

Time to turn on light and start the day.

Three valid indicators that can be used to measure someone’s patience :

1. When the internet doesn’t work.

2. Feeding an infant from the beginning until the end, three times a day, for a whole year.

3. Teaching your own children. About Anything.

Hopefully, no one has to deal with all those three at once.

Observing what happens around myself and the closest family since a long time makes me rarely impressed about people.

I can be impressed by so many little things about nature, but not people.

It maybe because people could behave so differently when they’re outside around strangers and when they’re around the ones who should matter the most.

Rarely impressed with any achievements, titles, or story about flashy careers, but always more curious about the real life behind that.

Being a mother 8 years ago made me realize that there’s no such thing as balance between work and life. Just like a see-saw on the playground, it doesn’t work when the see-saw stays on the middle.

To make it work, it should go up and down continuously. It means when you put your focus and energy on one thing, it would be on the high while the other would be on the lower part.

That was what happened on the first year of motherhood. I thought working part time while taking care the baby myself was possible. But, as soon as she arrived, life pushed me to choose without middle ground.

It was unimaginable before that I should do my resignation no longer after she came. Because I had no choice and I had to choose. Knowing what’s important helped a lot in making such decision.

Luckily, I still had my second work which was less demanding. But, weirdly, at certain point, I came to realize that I even had to compromise on this. Not completely gave it up, but to reduce the working hours significantly. Nothing prepared me that taking care a single tiny human being could take so much energy.

I hate not having enough money to afford more than my basic needs, but, turned out I couldn’t stand more how I behave behind the spotlight when I was too tired doing things with the spotlight.

I realized that being under the spotlight, where I have to behave, dressed and talked properly in front of people left me with close to zero energy when the light was off.

The result was I became even more short-tempered than before and projected to one who didn’t deserve it.

Reducing the time under the spotlight helped a lot. I might have less money, but I had time and space to do the more important things that I had to do, and I could sleep at night without the lingering guilt on my head. It was priceless.

Observing closest people around me, I found quite similar pattern. Those who are nice to other people outside could be such a monster to their people inside. Those who are seen as a good family man in other’s point of view were the dishonest ones to their own family. Those who seems to excel much on the work are the same people who tend to neglect the children and their house is messy. Those who seem could afford things to display outside are the same people who could be so ignorant when it comes to pay their own meal on family dinner.

Accidentally found this Clip and it feels so relatable with this post.

How true the hadist from the Prophet that said, “ The best of you are the best to their families, and I am the best to my family”.

Thus, I couldn’t help taking pinches of salt for every flashy display about something. Knowing how ones do behind the spotlight becomes a better way to judge a character.

The real one.

Mind the Gap is a daily phrase heard in London Rails.

In literal meaning, it’s a reminder to be careful about the gap between the train and the platform.

In deeper meaning, it’s also a good reminder to deal with life.

There will always be a gap between life we currently have and one that we aim to, between dreams inside the head and the heart and many obstacles to achieve them, and many more.

It could be one of the things that makes us wake up excitedly everyday, because we have gap(s) to work on and it’s nice to close the gap as much as possible.

Whenever my heart wants to take the easy way, being complacent instead of consistent, duck out from any commitments instead of showing up, the brain always tells me to mind the gap.

Based on years of experiences riding many kind of public transportations, it’s always easier and it feels safer to step and to move between the ride and the platform when gap is narrow like ones in MRT or most of London trains than when the gap is too wide (which is quite scary for me) like most of TransJakarta or KRL platforms.

Such a motivational post on this half busy-half lazy Sunday.

This is not about a book from Agatha Christie.

Unavoidably, the last few days had been spent by witnessing one of historical events happened this year. The passing of the longest monarch who had been around for almost 100 years was not something that we would see again in our lifetime.

Instead of feeling sad about the passing queen, or admiring the long queue of people who were voluntarily standing for hours to pay their respects, what made me relate more to this event was the aftermath. Something that would be experienced by the the closest family, whose life would be greatly affected by such big loss.

I am talking about that empty feeling after the funeral. Certain emotion that hit you after dealing with loud funeral with so many people around then returning to silent home.

Day one after funeral would be the hardest because you’re entering a new different life. A day without your loved one that had always been around. You felt her/his presence everywhere and tears would be flowing easily in any situation that reminds you of her/him.

There were days when you kept questioning yourself whether this was real or not. There were days and nights when you suddenly woke up in the middle of sleeping or just looking around your home trying to accept that she was no longer here.

Even there were times when you were outside, for me it was driving, when suddenly emotional breakdown attacked. You might want to find some available parking spot so you could cry for a while because it was too dangerous to keep going.

We would grieve less and less as the time goes by, but it would never go away. Life goes one with a huge void inside the heart that would remain forever.

A page from Tuesday with Morrie explained it well :

It is the tenth year from the biggest plot twist of my life in 2012, no single Friday passed without thinking about the day I lost my mother.

“Grief is the price we pay for love”

Indeed.

When it comes to writing, the tagline is true. There were so many times that I felt either tense or light-hearted that the only thing I could think of was to pour down everything into a writing, clicked this app, stared at the blank screen for few minutes, yet words didn’t came easily and ended up leaving the page.

My draft is quite full of empty space with bold untitled title on the top of it.

I wish to be able to store as many as possible things happen in daily life so I could revisit the memories later. The daily conversations I had with little girl, her remarks on certain situations, her response to my questions, the observation during my morning walk, things that I see along the way, the struggle to keep all the routines daily and how I try to keep reassuring and reasoning with the beast inside the head that this is what I have to do for now.

What might help is having a specific time to do it. When it comes to reading, it feels easier to make some time and it has been automatically done during waiting or just anything. I read daily and it feels easy.

Maybe because reading is more about consuming. That is undeniably easier than writing which is an act of producing something from scratch.

Maybe the first thing that needs to be done is find the why. The reason why this is important. Set a clear intention to do this. Maybe one of the reasons I still don’t do it because no clear whys about this. No wonder the hadits said, “every action is judged based on its intention”.

Then, the next most important principle in forming any habits is to Make It Easy. Because who wants to do hard thing if it’s not compulsory? Why should we make life harder by doing something uncomfortable when there’s no obligation to do it and no consequences for leaving it behind?

Surely, talking is cheap. Doing is another thing.

Hopefully soon after this, I could do more of the walk than just the talk.

Chant the mantra: “More is better”.