Am I your muse?

It’s been sometimes since I hear anything from you.

I always love our time together, I even thought I had some feelings for you.

It was my longing for intellectual conversations that makes me go crazy… Well you know that I’m basically crazy 😀

Somehow, I am satiated. Maybe not having to converse with mules daily makes me saner. 

I am not craving for ‘brains’ as much as I used to. Don’t get me wrong, I still adores you, I do.

You are a precious friend. 

But it’s been a while since you write. And then after we met, after so long, you started to write again.

You used to write a lot. And suddenly you stopped.

I am wondering… Am I your muse?

If it’s true, I like it, a lot.

You are still inspired me and I hope I do the same for you.

Hollow lives

Today I got a chance to talk to my extended family about happiness…

What I realised from those conversations was that we were never taught of happiness.

Our parents told us that when we are adults, these are the things that will make you happy:

1. To be rich, so that you can buy all the nice things in life.

2. To have a loving spouse, so that person will worship and provide you with good life.

3. To have a good job or become man of power, so that other people will look up and respect you.

4. To have a big & comfortable house, so that you can sleep well at night.

5. To have smart & healthy children, so they can take good care of you when you’re old.

6. To have important friends, so that you can follow the upward stream.

And so on…

What happened when you achieved all the above, you will be happy.

But that’s not true. One achievement after another, many are not feeling happy. They keep feeling hollow and unfulfilled.

On old age, they’ve become wiser. Begin to understand what makes life worthwhile…. Happiness. They’ve led a hollow life for decades because no one was determined enough to explain the meaning of happiness.

I’m a realistic bitch. Of course you need to be comfortable before enjoying life, but you definitely do not need 3 BMWs to feel comfortable. Or a house in every major city in the world. 

You need to earn enough for food and roof, and making sure that you have no debts. Then you can focus on how to be happy. How to achieve happiness.

I feel I had worked hard enough to have a debt free life, good food on the table, some new clothes when I need one, books to read… 

Now I don’t work like hamster on a wheel, I earn enough for daily food, some savings for rainy day, and living life on the slow lane. I got to try diving, go on holidays, and got to see my friends anytime I want.

Who’s happier? Me or you?

Who have a better life?

Of course I don’t have burden & obligation because I am unmarried and have no children. But this is the life I choose. You choose your own life… Why do you want me to live your hollow life while I can have a fulfilling life?

Your logic escapes me.

Write for the self

The great depression era

So many people sees that depression has been romantized and felt that the ones who suffered it, are just a bunch of loosers and attention seekers. 

I am not saying everyone who claimed to suffer from it are truly depressed. But we cannot ignore the facts that there are more depressed people… And we, ourselves who are responsible for this.

It is not only in our heads… Well, it is literally in our head, imbalanced chemical and shits..

But, it is us who created this epidemic. 

How?

Let’s go back to how we judged ourselves… We tend to measure our success by comparing to other people, it is the only way we know whether we have achieved a stage or not. 

Today’s world, it is easy to see how people do and how successful they are. Social media.

We only posts pictures or stories where we look and feel good. And everyone else does the same… No one is posting 0 balance in their bank account, or the amount of debts they have, or the bad relationship they have with their family or love ones.

We are all racing to show the world that we have made it.

One person post their new BMW, the other one post their holiday pictures at some exotic place, another one brag about their smart children, and it keeps on going… It accumulated in our head that to be successful as human being, we need to have all that. We are not seeing each as individual, we see them as a whole. Accumulated experience.

I sometimes feel that I haven’t achieve shit when going through my social media feed, I saw that everyone are doing better and I feel sad that I haven’t done this and that. 

Then I just closed my social media and go watch a movie, I feel much better. I mean, I have a roof, a wardrobe full of clothes, a fridge full of food, I am not poor, I have dozens pairs of shoes, I just ate nice and tasty food… I mean, as soon as I count my blessings, I started to fear whether I will have enough in the future eat. Because I have fallen to the social media trap.

I buy stuff that I don’t need, I went to a restaurant that is too expensive, I spent money on none essential things. It downed on me, I couldn’t be the only person who felt this.

I mean, I have some urges to keep up and tick the boxes that society designed, and at the same time, I am terrified on how am I going to survive the future if I don’t have enough to sustain.

But, we do define ourselves by social norm. And society tells you that you need to keep up, and when you failed to keep up, you fall into depression… Because you feel that you are not worthy.

This is the reason for more and more of us fall into depression… Because we cannot ‘keep up’.

I mean how can we keep up when they show you “5 best lipstick to wear this season and the right occasion to wear them”, while we only have money to buy 1 lipstick? 

And when your friends burning money on fancy coffees or sexy food, you can’t even buy a big Mac!

And you see where you are right now, and thinking, I don’t think I will be rich anytime soon, but I need to feel that I have made it. I don’t see these people are working hard to get what they want, so why I have to do it? 

I believe everyone realised that they only get partial story of a person, but when they’ve become persons, accumulated experiences, it is hard to ignore that small voice saying, “maybe you’ve been doing it wrong”.

I foresee that the future world is going to be bleak and gloomy, because of these ridiculous goals that people set for themselves. 

This is why I stop looking at pictures on social media, and stop posting as well… I will not be responsible for what people turn out to be.

We are yet to see the huge wave of depression… Not only economic, but people. 

I am a pompous bitch

I have been spending time browsing internet to understand why can’t I understand that people cannot understand me… or my thinking.

Deep inside my heart, I kept saying “How can he/she be that stupid? It is obvious that should be done this way or that way”.

I seriously never thought that I am way smarter than the average… I know that I am a bit smarter. Only a bit.

But recently I’ve become more and more desperate to find people to have deeper conversation… Just now, I passed through a pool area. There are 3 pools… Baby pool, children pool and semi-Olympic pool… I was thinking, of course I need to find new friends, just like I need to move out from baby pool if I want to dive and feel the water enveloping me. Those who are in baby pool, will look at me weirdly if I tried to dive deep… because there is no space there. Just like a lot of people I know, they only talked about shallow things, gossips, menial things…

So I tried to find answers from smart friends… more logical and satisfying… but none of them give me good answers. Then I start browsing internet… at first my key words are “why can’t I understand others?”… and it grew to… “Bipolar and intelligence”… and just “dealing with less intelligent people”.

And I stumbled upon plenty of blogs, articles, etc. such as this one (http://thoughtcatalog.com/kovie-biakolo/2013/11/10-reasons-being-intelligent-is-difficult/)

Most of them are saying, it is not fun to be intelligent and smarter than the rest… in fact, it can be very dangerous for health!

I don’t want to admit that I am smarter than most people, I don’t want to say that my brain is superior to other human being… but, the facts that I found were too similar to what I’m feeling… and it made me even more depress… I am living in Indonesia, dammit! where no one is reading book (I don’t really mean everyone, it’s a figure of speaking), how can I find anyone, a friend who can understand this?

 

Don’t be proud when someone say you are smart, or if you have a smart child… life is tough and full of pain because most people do not care what you care, or what your child care about… You will never win when you are smarter than the rest… I can tell you this.

Sometimes you have to lose to assholes

I have a colleague who earn the most in our tiny office… and he is… well, I have to regret to say this… he actually said “I don’t need to read anymore books, because I know all what I need to know”

I swear that is exactly what he said to me… I was both impressed and disgusted. How can anyone admits that they don’t need to read anymore books or learn anything new??? HOW???

and that person earn more than the rest of us…. 

But, imposters could only survive when they have a lot of coverage. As soon as they fly solo…everyone sees a duck and not a flock of swans.

What upsets me even more, my boss felt that as long as he has me, I can fix the fucked up… again and again, I have become a fixer.

My boss asked me if I know anyone else like me… I told him, I have been looking for that person for 36 years and still searching. 

I don’t think I would ever feel not lonely… I am not saying that I am superior in brain power, maybe I am… but how can you blame me when I can’t even find anyone who can be as agile as me in term of thinking?

And this person, who got paid more than me, he sits there scratching his head, looking at me like a deer caught in headlights when I state my thinking or question that person thinking or methods… still sits there and enjoys the money from my sweat… I bet my sweat tasted very sweet.

To be checked

In my current workplace, I feel like I am unchecked and unchallenged. It scares me… I would become arrogant and pompous bastard that I avoid to be.

I tried to check myself to other people around me, but it feels like… no one dares to stand up and say, “that’s fucking stupid, you should do…” or something like that.

Everyone keep saying, “you are right”, “that’s smart”, or worse… “okay”. 

I really need someone to tell me, “think of it this way…” or “that is not right, you are seeing it wrongly”… 

It scares me to be amongst sheep… that I would believe that I am a lot better than the rest and would fall into my personal fable. 

Of course I want to be the best. Of course I want to be ahead of everyone else… but it is automatic when you are amongst sheep… you’ll become the Sheperd. 

I have to detach myself from the crowd that confirms me. I need to be checked every now and then. And the only way to do it is to find a crowd that makes me on my toes all the time…

It is weird… I am uncomfortable in a situation that bows down and agree with me. So weird… 

Different kind of…

So many people don’t understand why I got frustrated badly at small issues…
What they see is that I fixed the issue in 5 minutes, hence it is NOT a big issue.

Maybe it is true, the issue is not big at all… for me it is a mere glitch.

But what makes me frustrated is not the issue itself… is the people who are supposed to make sure the issue does not exist at first place, or those who were supposed to fix the issue.
It upsets me a lot, that they cannot see the easy solution and make the issue like a life and death situation… then I got angry, furious even… because I don’t understand why they cannot see the simple solution?!

But then again, I think I am angry not because they don’t understand… I am angry because at that moment, I feel so alone. Because I feel different, I feel no one understand how I think, and I feel that I cannot understand how they think… which is the bigger issue!

Why do people go to different doors just to get to the toilet, for instance. When they can go through 2 doors only.

Why people don’t think in 1 straight line, but making things complicated by using all the shapes in the world, just to get to the end game.

People said, they are unique and different. Well, I hate to burst your bubble… you don’t know what is all about until you got very frustrated and feel very lonely.
And then you got very angry at yourself because you don’t belong anywhere… you feel like you don’t belong in this world…

I am upset with myself for being who I am… sometimes I hate myself for being me.

I don’t understand why I can’t understand

I am frustrated. 

I don’t know I can’t understand why people cannot do things that I felt as simple things?

I can’t understand why people don’t learn from their previous mistakes?

I can’t understand why people don’t see that they need to be better than they are today in order to survive in the future?

I definitely cannot understand why people cannot see my way of understanding some things?

I cannot understand, 17 years of experience is not much better than junior people?

I am very frustrated because I cannot understand why people don’t understand… 

Some things are simple logics for me, some needs more than logics… but why can’t people see it that way? Why they don’t have the logics?

I feel so alone. 

Ibu berprinsip

Seorang ibu mendemonstrasikan memasak mie goreng… sambil memberikan demo dan memperlihatkan bahan-bahan makanan yang digunakan, kami mengobrol.

Pembicaraan antara saya dan sang ibu yang disaksikan banyak orang.

Ibu: Saya engga kasih anak saya makan mie instan mbak. Kan ga sehat ya?!

Saya: manggut-manggut

Memotong-motong bawang, kress..kress..

Ibu: saya begini mbak, masakan saya biasa aja… maksud saya bukan kaya rasa restoran gitu mbak. Tapi kan yang penting anak-anak makan masakan rumah, kita kan ga tau yah kalo makan-makan diluar begitu bener apa engga, maksud saya bersih apa engga. 

Saya: oh, jadi ibu selalu masak ya?

Ibu: iya mbak. Kita kan bisa yakin sama masakan sendiri ya…

Menumis bawang… sreng… sreng…

Ibu: ini ya mbak, ditulis sampe harum.

Saya: oh, ok, ok. Tadi ibu bilang ibu selalu masakin buat anak-anak ya?

Ibu: iya dong (sambil sibuk pemasukan mie yang sudah direbus kedalam penggorengan).

Saya: Jadi anak-anak sama sekali engga pernah makan mie instan?

Ibu: Ya makan mbak, tapi saya engga kasih bumbunya, saya kasih garam aja. Kan udah ada rasa tuh…

Saya: (manggut-manggut, mikir dalam hati “bingung ngapain juga beli mie instan Kalo ga pake bumbu? Kan mending beli mie telor seperti yang lagi dimasak”) 

Saya: itu selalu bu?

Ibu: (tangan sibuk memasukkan kecap, garam…) Ya kalo dirumah, kalo diluar kan kita ga tau ya mbak… saya cuma selalu pesan jangan makan sembarangan, kan kaya bumbunya mie instan yah engga sehat kan yah mbak?

Disaat yang bersamaan sang ibu berprinsip memasukkan sebungkus bumbu penyedap kedalam adukan mie goreng.

Ibu: ini saya pake sedikit aja biar sedep…

Saya: (lah sebungkus dikit, yang banyak seberapa?)

Saya: Ini bumbu penyedap bukannya sama yah kaya bumbu mie instan gitu?

Ibu: eh, beda dong mbak. Ini kan penyedap masakan, ga bisa ngasih rasa kaya bumbu mie instan… nih jadi, Cobain deh…

Ibu: (Dengan bangga menyajikan hasil masakannya, sepiring mie goreng yang menggunakan 1 sachet bumbu penyedap.)