Category: Thoughts

… 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.