Being insomniac used to be quite fun for me, I could do a million things til the wake of dawn without getting tired, doing anything from reading, DVD marathon, calling friends, to hanging out or clubbing with them. But lately, being insomniac for me means lying alone in my bed, thinking about everything, just staring blankly at the ceiling, until I usually end up turning on the PDA or laptop and start writing, sometimes losing the ability to rest this brain until 2 in the morning. I’ve talked about wanting to have the power to have amnesia on demand, right?
And last night, as I had just returned from another hang out with some friends, I just started thinking: does this life go anywhere beyond this? For my socialite friends who are reading this, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy every second that I spent with you guys (every laughter that we’ve shared is as precious as a piece of gem), but have you ever arrived at a point in your life when you’re asking yourself the very question of: is life always about party, monthly clubbing at Retro, coffee breaks at Starbucks, the latest trend at Zara, being able to afford a pair of Narcisso Rodriguez, owning the most sophisticated PDA, or achieving targets to earn millions of bonus each year?
Never thought before that this could actually happen to me, until Lindsay Lohan said something this morning that really got me thinking: “Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Honestly, it’s been ages since I’ve had one of those defining moments. And for as far back as I can remember, I’ve only had a few, too few to actually claim that my life has a divine meaning.
In the depth of my solitude, sitting at my desk with a headphone covering my ears, listening to Simon Webbe’s No Worries, totally cutting off unwanted verbal communications from people around me, a warning box popped up on my screen, saying that I had new mail. It was from one of my closest friends. And I started reading: “Remember when I said that it’s so hard to find delightful things in my life nowadays? Why is that?” I hit reply and started typing: “I don’t know. Maybe because we’ve so much fun in our life lately, that everything that used to be delightful for us is now just mundane? Can I just ask you a question: is there anything that makes you smile today?” I sat there thinking of anything that made me smile that day. “I know this is probably so not important, but a new comment on my blog just made me smile.” I didn’t have to wait very long until she replied: “Never thought of thinking of something that makes me smile each day … Maybe I should start doing that, just to remind me to be grateful … let me think, well there’s this one … my best friend in Tokyo just messaged me, asking what I want for my birthday. I just can’t wait til I receive the package.” And I asked her: “How old will you be?”, not remembering her year of birth. She replied laughing: “Hahaahaha, damn it, you just took the smile off my face by reminding me that I’m about to turn thirty.”
Today, starting the day with a big headache and some throwing up in the rest room that didn’t stop until it’s close to lunch time, then spending the rest of the day dealing with the customers’ problems, it was actually as I was beating the traffic on my way home that I had the time to message her: “Remember when you said that it’s so hard to find delightful things in our life nowadays? Well, I can’t think of anything great about my life today other than the fact that I’m still alive when I wake up … how’s yours?” I was just sighing at the broken bus in front of my car when the phone beeped. “Ah Iks, you got me thinking and I can’t find anything great about mine either today. Do you think it’s because our standard of happiness is too high? Masa sih iya seharian ga nemu sesuatu yang bikin kita ketawa tapi bukan basa basi?” I tried to think of something, if anything, that put a hint of smile at my face today. “Well, maybe just the breakfast that I had this morning was so delicious; it’s from this lontong place next to my high school. That’s probably it.” And she replied: “Hmm … when you put it that way. I did feel happy when my subordinates at the branch listened to me for once … But why does it feel like down grading my standard of delightful things … Hahaha.”
And her statement just got me back where I started, asking about my own meaning of life, my supposedly standard of happiness and delightful things. I began to think of previous moments in my life that actually took my breath away … I can think of some grand ones, like when I survived a really scary car accident last year (the car was thrown off the cliff), or when I got off a burning aircraft safely about nine years ago (a dozen of fire fighter trucks had already been waiting on the ground when we landed). But there’s also this one thing that I did about eight years ago, something that I had never thought I could do, or wanted to do. The story goes like this. In 1998 when I was still at university and just returning from a couple of internship programs in Australia, I was assigned to organize community projects at a designated remote area in Indonesia. It was a small village called Bangkal in Central Kalimantan. I was so stressed out when I arrived, realizing that I was about to spend one whole month without any bare necessities like electricity and running water. I spent the first night being resentful of the whole situation, wanting to leave as soon as I can, actually contemplating of resigning from the whole project. But I was also a bit ashamed of my Australian partners who ended up enjoying our adventure, spending the whole day working under the sun, building public toilets and model homes which adhered to healthy standard. They even spent the afternoon playing Aussie rules football, with the local kids watching in excitement.
Fasting, as it was on Ramadhan, and not wanting to be more sunburnt than I already was, I chose to be involved in projects that didn’t require me to be under the sun eight hours a day (my Aussie friends loved the opportunity to get a natural tan, but I said: “Count myself out.”), which was teaching. I organized an English teaching program for the local kids, which consisted of teaching at the junior high in the morning, then giving lessons at the Balai Desa in the afternoon. As much as I loved teaching and still do, it was really a challenge walking a mile everyday to reach the junior high, at a hundred degrees, while fasting! Probably the hardest fasting month I’ve ever had. I can’t even begin to tell you how many dreams I had about breaking the fasting with a scoop of Ben and Jerry back then …
But it was not teaching English that really left me rethinking the whole meaning of life – it was like a walk in the park for me. It was teaching Iqra’ at the local mosque. I bet most of you are probably falling off your chair right now, screaming in shock: “Ika?? Teaching Iqra’?” Honestly, even I still can’t believe it. Three of my friends on the team organized a Taman Pendidikan Al Qur’an in between the school and the English lessons, and they were short of teachers by the second day, as there were so many local kids were interested in the program. Although most Kalimantan people are non-Muslims, there were a lot of transmigrant families from Java who are Muslims, and there was no TPA before that they could enrol their kids in. Knowing I wasn’t involved in the physical development projects, they asked me to fill in another spot as a teacher at TPA, to which I replied: “Haa? Seriously?” I had to admit that I wasn’t very religious, and yes I could read Al Qur’an, but actually teaching kids how to? Were they freaking nuts? “Come on, Ka, you’re a Muslim, and you can read, right? Just try, it’s not as hard as you think,” said Tio. Well, I thought, maybe I could, after all the other teachers were also the ones who people might not consider as typical Iqra’ teachers: Tio and Lany were my mall-hopping friends in Canberra and Dinda was actually Miss Surabaya on that year and my shopping partner in Sydney. God, have mercy on those kids soul for having a group of hedonistic people like us as their teachers.
I don’t know whether it’s because I literally had nothing else to do in a village as remote as this or because I really enjoyed it, but I ended up spending half day at the school teaching English, then another half at the mosque teaching Iqra’. I remembered a couple of Islamic songs that I knew from my Qur’an teacher when I was a kid, so we started teaching them those also. It was really weird, you know, hanging out at the mosque after we finished the class, remembering that just at that exact moment a month before we were at The Rocks, enjoying afternoon coffee break at a bistro.
Each day just went by with the same routines, until we reached the last day that we were there. “So, where we’re gonna go tomorrow once we arrived in the city?” I smiled at Dinda as I was putting on the kerudung, before we started the last class. She giggled. “The choice is endless, Ka! Shopping?” We just couldn’t wait to get a taste of modern civilization again. But we also felt a bit sad about leaving those kids, the ones that had put the smiles in our face during the thirty days that we were there. So, we started the last class, really excited about the fact that the kids were preparing something as a goodbye to us. And they did, they sung a couple of songs, dressed up in Islamic clothes the best that they could. A couple of hours before, I had just counting down the hours until we left that village, but when I heard them sing wholeheartedly, I just sat there, feeling sad, feeling really really sad, thinking: this was probably the last time that I’ll ever see them. And when they started reaching into our hands and kissed them – “salam junjung” – tears were running down my cheeks, hearing them say: “Terima kasih, Kak Ika.”
The four of us sat in front of the mosque, watching them leave, waiting til Maghrib arrived, just absorbing the last moment that we were there. Then Lany glanced at me: “Lo nangis juga ya Ka?” I nodded: “Kok gw tiba-tiba sedih banget gini ya?” Dinda wiped her tears: “Sama … padahal kmaren-kmaren kita ga betah banget di sini.” Tio exhaled then said: “Besok kita dah ga ngajar mereka lagi, dah ga ktemu mereka lagi.”
I really miss that moment, the one that really took my breath away. Just to once again feel that my life actually carries a significant meaning to people around me.
I don’t even know what I’m going to write today. I’m just tired … because everything keeps coming and coming and I just can’t seem to stop it. My grandma’s sickness, and then hear death, and one huge problem that I can’t even share. It’s like hard rain that won’t stop eventhough the earth has flooded. It’s like tears that keeps on running eventhough there’s nothing left to cry about. It’s like swimming on the ocean not knowing where the next island is going to be.
