It’s mid of November, but I haven’t felt the Christmas spirit. I also haven’t heard Christmas songs being played. But shops have started to sell Christmas decorations, trees, cards etc. I do agree Christmas has been commercialized, but what isn’t in this current world? At least Christmas still has some meaning and giving, and charity work goes up during Christmas, and we have a free day from work.
So for this upcoming Christmas, and to celebrate that I have been writing my thoughts for more than a year, I want to introspect myself.
I have this guy friend, we are close since high school, and he likes to share his thoughts, his problems; something good, something fun, something sad and everything. Now that both of us have our own family, we hardly get in touch but if we happen to have a chance to talk, we still can attach bit and bits, end to end with no problem. Orang Jawa call it Nyuambungh.
One day, he shared his problem to me, after some conversation, then he told me, I’ve shared a lot of things to you. My secret etc, and I appreciate that you always listen and help me. But I realize that you hardly tell me and share me your problem? Do you have problem at all?
It struck me and I gave it a thought. Maybe he’s right, perhaps he’s right. I don’t like to share my problems, not because I want to, but because by talking about it, it reminds me more, and I thought by talking only it wouldn’t be solved, instead, it would make me down, and make my friend down by hearing it.
I thought if I keep it to myself, I’d be able to solve it by myself. But I also realize, does it mean that I’m one type of person who choose to run away from problems?
So, jokingly of course, with this friend I could never be 100% serious, I also tried to share my problem, with his help. He tried to keep me talking by asking some questions. It was embarrassing, because the problem was ugh, personal, yeah, young people, what else was our biggest problem except relationship. It wasn’t smooth, we laughed, we stuck, but we were getting better, and then I know, maybe I can’t solve the problems by talking, but at least it’s relieving to share it with someone. Along the way, we might find some brilliant ways to solve it and at the end, nothing is too heavy.
I also found more surprises along the way I learn to talk more openly. Such as, many people misread me. I cared for them but they thought I didn’t. I also amaze that I could hide my feelings very very well, sometimes too well. Too well that I only had a boyfriend when I was 20. He he he he he he..
Okay, I had to cut the crap here. These are not the things I intended to say. All I want to say is that, I used to find it horrible to write my thinking. Sometimes I was caught in horror when somebody told me they read it. I was like, Oh shit shit, did I write something bad? Something secret? Something humiliating?
My colleagues made noise when I refused to give them the link to my blog. I wrote and complained so many things about them and office. I would never, in my own will, let them read it. Then they threatened that they would try to find it by themselves. Easy, go to Friendster, search for name, fit the particular and bam. I was panic, and I banned everyone except first tier friend to access the blog. It should be nothing, but indeed I was really really panic.
When everything slowed down, I opened the connection again. So far, so safe.
I just realize that I might not want to mix up these two worlds, my work life and my real life. They are different!
But this Christmas, I want to try to open up more, (but not by giving my colleagues the link to this of course),
I will still write as if nobody will read it, because if not, maybe I won’t write anything, but I won’t restrain myself from everything.
Shiooooooooooooook…
So I share my self-introspection. Not in particular or alphabetical order.
My favorite time:
1. I love to be with my family. We eat a lot; we make fun of each other. But it is fun. I remember when I was a child; we spent time by playing cards together. And now, we like to play mahjong. Mahjong! It’s not really about gambling, but sit down together and have quality time and conversations. Those times are precious to me.
2. Spending time with my friends. Old friends, good friends are those people who keep me young, kekeke. People who can make me laugh silly and free.
3. Spending time with Hubby, myself and of course, diving, my quite new passion but something I grow so fond of that I can’t imagine giving it up. Hopefully I’ll never need to.
My stupidity:
1. It was the third year of my university. So I was in the Bank ATM and wanted to draw
200Kto pay for something. By the time the machine was processing the money, I remember I didn’t need that much, so when the money came out, I figured that it would be tedious for me to bank it in again, I better let the machine pulled it back in and reduced 0 in my balance. So I stood there, made face to the money, lewekin, nyenyenyenye, until the atm machine pulled it back. I was still laughing until I printed out the balance, and bam, my balance was 200K less! Which was close to zero?
I was panic, only 30 seconds ago the money was in front of my nose, but I made fun at it. I had to report to the bank and stated the most stupid reason, trying to make it sound not so stupid and waited for their call the whole day until the bank closed all the transactions and proved that they had 200K more in their balance. I tell you, it was a very long day.
2. A friend insisted to introduce me to a guy; I refused until one day he really came to my class. My first stupid reaction: I ran. What the hell was I thinking? I really don’t know. And it didn’t happen only once. Lucky we became friends during our other stage of life.
Similar thing happened during Junior High School, a guy who sat on the same table, we had morning and afternoon class, he put some kind of letter below the table. We became pen pal for a while, until he requested to meet. I tried to avoid the meeting, he sent me pictures, and worse, apparently he knew my cousin. When we had a family gathering, he was there. And I hid. I don’t mean anything bad; I’m just not good with strangers.
What was I thinking?
1. On my first year in University, I found that my world was opened wide all of the sudden. There was this activity called Social Work, so we signed up to do social work for so called not-civilized villages. We built generator, public toilet, donate books blablabla, I was excited to join the activity, but bam, when I asked for permission to skip class, my lecturer rejected it. Our year, we only had 60 students, and there was a task for every class, so it’d be obvious if I was missing, otherwise, I guess I wouldn’t even ask. I was so surprised that he didn’t want to understand the reason. So I started to get angry and my reasoning were made in anger. Of course he was not happy, I would have jeopardize my particular subject if not for my good friend, who is much much more sensible, and she managed to talk the lecturer to give me, us, the permission, she decided to join me that very moment. Thanks, Tina, for saving my ass and accompanied me to the beautiful island where we watched cool guys worked with shovels. Aww : )
2. See, the problem that I have is when I’m angry, I tend to forget all the risks that I take. It’s good to defend ourselves, that’s what I think, but it’s also right that we think of the consequences. There were many times that I stood up when someone tried to take advantages of my mom’s shop, myself or my girl friends. Typical, woman, and Chinese, and those assh*l* thought they could scare us to death, or when someone tried to threaten me on the street. From slamming them with words, banged table and took out their physical challenge, I only know that I was in risk of many things. Luckily, those bastards were all chicken indeed. So, I must say that we shouldn’t act carelessly, but sometimes there are not many good other way to face a problem. Temper. Temper. It makes people live shorter.
My regrets:
1. We had a German Shepard, from the moment we bought it, she has this skin disease. We didn’t know about it, and it didn’t show much, the ******* pet shop lied a big deal when we asked. She was the liveliest dog, although she was sick, her spirit was much higher than others. We wanted her to help us guard the shop.
When riot struck, she escaped those stupid villains with minor bruise, so we had to keep her in our residence. Times went by, and there were times when many of us didn’t have full time to take care of her. Many of us stayed away from home. She was okay, she was healthily, but bearing the thought that she would sick again if nobody could take care of her, we had to find a way out.
Like an answer, one of our far neighbor, came by and asked for her. He has one male German Shepard and the owner wanted a friend for him. We knew his dog was very well groomed, and he acclaimed that he knew this type of disease and how to take care of her. We believed him with all the proves lied before our eyes, so we gave the dog to him.
One day, me and my mom happened to go for a morning walk, we walked further than usual. Near the man’s house, we saw a German Shepard being tied under the tree. My first reaction when I see a dog, is trying to befriend it. So I approached it. The dog was quite distracted; she kept looking at me, my mom, and made some sound. I noticed the tattoo on her ear. That’s the tattoo for every registered dog. I couldn’t be sure it’s her, but it was too much of the coincidence. My mom asked some security guard nearby and the security guard confirmed that it’s that man’s dog, our dog.
We were angry of course. Although she didn’t look very bad, but she was skinny and sad, and they tied her out everyday, sleeping on the pavement and sheltered below the tree. For a dog whose spirit never down, she certainly had gone through too much that she lost it. I couldn’t really remember the details, my mom said when she confronted the guy, he told her that our dog always fought with his, therefore he kept it outside during daytime. Maybe the saddest part for us is that we couldn’t do anything much. I was in my University all the time, so did everyone else. We couldn’t report him for neglecting, because we couldn’t really prove it. I couldn’t sleep and I cried for days.
Maybe this is one of my very biggest regrets that I couldn’t bear to think or to talk about.
2. Again. My temper.
One of the type of person I don’t like the most is the person who smiles when his/her heart say different thing. In my opinion, that is the scariest thing on earth and I don’t want any business to do with them. Imagine, they can stab you while they are smiling.
But, on the other hand, sometimes I do envy them. When I’m angry, or I don’t like or don’t feel happy about something, I certainly can’t hide it. It shows all over my face, my behavior and the way I talk. The fact that I can’t sugar coat it make me say nasty things that hurt other people, and sometimes, my parents. Hurting my parent’s feeling, although they forgave me, and not something major, I could hardly forgive and forget myself.
Sometimes I just wish that I had the option to smile while I’m angry. It’s fake, but better than hurting the people I love.
3. Learning from stupidity no.2, I should have give people more chance to get to know me, and I to get to know them. I might not know how many chances I have passed, but luckily, many had become my good friends later in life. They deserved thumbs up to bear with my stupidity, and we can laugh about it now.
My changes:
The way I see people representing religion.
The most of the thing I questioned in the past, was why would any parents want to baptize their children since baby? Don’t they want to let them have choices?
With this, my good friends managed to convince me, that they wanted what they feel is the best for the children. I agree with this, parents are angels; they have our best interest in their heart, and indeed that’s a very valid reason. I still have my doubts, but I satisfied with that.
Along the way, I have more questions, and I realized that there are two most disturbing things:
1. A. I saw ordinary people being kind; in fact some of the genuine kindest people that I met are not educated, poor and they might not even have religion.
B. Not one, but many of the preachers say that people without religion (or sometimes specifically without being a Christian) would, harshly put, go to hell.
If I have to categorize the things above, I would categorize A as Fact, and B as Fiction.
I have a big problem about anyone who says that my Buddist parent, my friends from other religions or those nice people in the street who never hurt a fly won’t have place in God’s home and go to hell.
2. Some preachers indeed put in their point hard and clear that we should donate, donate and donate money, small money, big percentage of money or whatever to prove that we are good Christian, helping people, repay God etc etc.
What I have big problem above is that sometimes they almost condemn those who don’t do so.
And, correct me if I’m wrong, if somebody have difficulties to make the ends meet, or want to contribute with their energy, their time in helping anybody else, doesn’t it worth some mention? Should it have to be money all the time? And where does it go every time? Can I be sure that I’m helping poor people by donating? But why, when some misfortunate thing happened, we often have to recollect money before they could do something?
But after giving a thought about these two disturbing things, I found the answer, at least for myself. It’s human. It’s all in human error. When somebody is considered qualified to say something in the name of religion, like preacher, it doesn’t mean that they are right. More often, we have to think again and be selective. They make mistakes, because they are human, but the dumb thing is without knowing better, they are pulling other people to follow, and for that, it’s a big mistake to let them talk on the first place.
No matter how weird, how many times we see people do stupid things in the name of religion? Almost nothing is more violent than war in the name of religion.
How many times we read news about crazy priests or other religion leader molest, rape or corrupt? And their victims, are those people who went to them to get some help or enlightenment to be good, and those money are hard earned money spared by people who want to do good.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t give up my Christianity. But maybe I give up on human. I only try to do what the good man teaches us to do, to be kind. Not by money, not by being a Christian.
My fears:
1. I have constant fear of something bad happens to people I care about. I almost can’t stop worrying about it, and I don’t know what I will do. It’s something beyond my ability and something that I can’t outgrow.
2. I have a very big fear that I would become somebody that I’m not. I am afraid of being tied down, giving up all my passions and dreams of life. It sound abstract, but it’s very real.
Damnit! How can this post become this serious? I feel all the pressure during the writing process, I actually feel sad, stupid, angry and scared. This is how I celebrate my one-year of writing about my life? Maybe I will give up after this heavy post!
I’m sure I still have many things, but I’ll stop now.
Maybe I add in one more thing to cheer me up, because I’m depressed at this moment!
One thing I’m glad I never give up:
During our open water class to get my first certification as diver, we went through one hell of morning. I had seasickness; I was throwing up, beside the boat, behind the boat, on the surface, inside the water. It was a nightmare. If there were lands anywhere near my sight, I would give up that very moment and celibate from the sea. Fortunately, we were far far away in the open water. Although I was dying and suffering, I had to finish the lessons. When I received my certification, there was nothing in my mind to allow my self involved again. Lucky, I have my buddy and my friend; they were my only reasons to try again. And now, it’s the passion of my life. Every moment, I dream of doing it. Apa coba.
Okay. My hardest post ever. I should be paid by hours, I might get rich. 3111 words. Holy crap.
Eh, why my boss passed by so many times?
______________________________________________________________________________
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
- Oscar Wilde
Every religion is good that teaches man to be good.
- Thomas Paine
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
- Edward Gibbon
If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Never make a defense or apology before you are accused.
- Charles I
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- Phyllis Diller
Never speak when you are angry. If you do you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.
- Robert Lynd
Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.
- Theodore Roosevelt
