Watching Him Work

One new year eve, maybe when I was ten, I stood in silence behind my grandfather. He brought my story book, along with cans of paint and brushes. He opened the book and stopped on a page with picture of a boy and a girl wearing uniform. They walked to school, while waving their hands to their parents.

He took a pencil and started making rough lines on a white wall in front of him. He glanced back and forth between the book and the wall. It took me a while to realize that he was copying the boy and the girl on the book to the wall. I kept on watching him in silence, until I was too sleepy to stay awake and decided to go to bed.  

On the following morning, I looked at the wall and chuckled at it. There’re supposed to be little kids going to kindergarten, but my grandfather messed their faces up. He made them look way older than any five year olds.

They wore uniform with my grandfather’s favorite color: green. They smiled weirdly to their invisible parents. Their tangled fingers were holding colorful balloons.

The balloons say TK NU AL-ANSHAR.

The name of a school he built next door, over thirty years ago.  

On any other nights, I would find him doing another artsy projects for the school. Sometimes he repainted the chairs, sometimes he created hand-written sign boards, and sometimes he re-arranged the classrooms’ layout. When I wasn’t too sleepy, I would join him by watching silently and he would let me. At the following mornings, he would be sleeping and I would be awake, enjoying the master pieces he’s done during the night.

Until now, I still do love watching him work.  

It’s like he never stopped working. 

Grandfather

Three days ago, on the day of the death of my grandfather, I sat still with my cousins in the living room, waiting for our turn to give our last kisses to his flowery-scented body.

My grandmother couldn’t move her feet due to her illness, she remain seated next to his coffin and cried out to him desperately. My youngest aunt burst into tears after her last kiss, my mother hugged her and said it was our turn: the grandchildren.

I moved closer to the shrouded body, kneeled by his side and touched his forehead with the tip of my nose. It was jasmine, rose, reminisce and all lively scents, as it is him who’s breathing out the flowers. I couldn’t think of a prayer for him. I couldn’t think of anything at all.

I was busy feeling his wrinkled skin to mine, inhaling his pheromone with all my strength, while trying so hard to hold back my tears from falling to him. I was being an egoic-head who’s craving for his body. The body that made my existence possible, the body where my blood and vein were rooted.

I went back to my spot, covered my red-face with my hand and let the sorrow take over me. My sisters cried in a hug. My mother was there too, calming them down.

“He’s now in a better place. He’s free of the pain,” she said while stroking their backs.

I joined the hug after a moment of solo-heavy-cry and made the most heartbreaking grief in the world.

I’ve Been Dead for Too Long

After finish reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I become more conscious of my thought. I’m not surprised when I found myself couldn’t stop thinking, because that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for my whole life. That’s also how I identified myself as a human. Noticing that it is just how everyone else’s been doing.

In fact, that way of life has made me a dead meat. I might still look like a real person: be nice to other; set some life goals; and have a hobby, but I haven’t been actually alive. The thing is, my thought has been running my life this whole time. Thanks to the book, recently, whenever I caught my mind wandering, I would shout internally, “come back!” I do come back, but that wouldn’t be for long. Seconds later, I’ll be somewhere else.

I desperately want to arrive at some point in the near-future, where I project myself as a better person with better life. I delete my unrealistic monthly goals and wait for the next month to come, just to set other seemingly-realistic goals. I rewrite my unchecked to-do-lists and convince myself that I’ll do them tomorrow. I wake up every morning and tell myself that it’s going to be a good day.

These doings lie on the same false believe: the now is a stepping stone for the better future. The now becomes a wait for an arbitrary thing called the future.

The clock time surely is a helpful tool for organization. It does give me lessons from the past and hopes for the future, but my life happen now. Once I’m done using the clock time for practical reasons, I should return to the present moment immediately and be truly alive by being in the now.

There is never a time when my life is not now. It has always been that way and it will always be.

I’ve been dead for too long.

Now is the only time to wake up.

Maybe, you are too.

Little Mischief Guys Called Thought and Emotion

There are two things that us human, love the most: Thought and Emotion. 

We love them so much that we let them take control of our lives. We are so into them that not even in a second, we are willing to let them go. We are so full of them that we become them and they become us. We adore them so much that we keep on denying that they bring us pain. We’ve been blindfolded, yet we can’t help but to keep them around, waiting for them to untie the fold.  

Like us, Thought and Emotion have their own favorite: the illusion of time. They like dragging us to the past and the future.

“In the past,” said Thought. “Things were better.”

“In the future,” Emotion takes turn. “We will be happy.”

They are so seductive that it’s almost impossible not to trust their words. Unfortunately, it makes us detached from the present, the only time where we live, the only thing Thought and Emotion dislike. Sometimes, when we claim ourselves as being present, we still do judge and analyze. We bring over our two lovers to the only moment that should’ve been for us to experience. We frame the now in the eye of Thought and Emotion, ignoring the eyes of our own.

This might not be easy, as we’ve been under their control for most of our lifetimes, but this requires one thing only: be a watcher. Watch the now as it is: watch what Thought is doing to our heads, what Emotion is doing with our chests. Head and chest, both are part of our bodies, the most truthful character in this play.

We might be manipulated by Thought and Emotion, but Body will always safe the day. Body gives us physical signs of what Thought and Emotion have done to us. Once we become the watcher, we’ll listen when Body tells us the ache in our muscles, or the pain in our stomachs.

Listening to Body means, we withdraw ourselves from the illusions and bring ourselves back to the present. Thought and Emotion will still be there, but they’ll lose their control over us. We know that those little mischief guys are still inside, but now they’re under our watch. They might still come and go, but they’ll no longer inhabit the life that we own.

*this post was written after reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Collective Pessimism

Collective pessimism: an act of responding to a global issue in a pessimistic way which done by a large group of people.

Human are all pessimistic in some extent. This keeps us survive the harsh reality of life: choosing the right path over the wrong one, picking a true love over a toxic relationship, working a nine-to-five job instead of lying on our beds all day long.

In individual level, the results of being pessimistic come in a short-term period and experienced by only a singular person or a little group of people. The consequences are so visible to our eyes, touchable to our skins, that we could see and feel it coming in daily basis.

On top of that, this pessimism is so little compared to how we feel about our capabilities. We might feel doubtful if we will get the job we applied for, but we silently believe that we can send another thousands of applications to other thousands companies. We know we could do it despite of difficulties we might encounter through the journey. It is the confidence that makes the doubt less significant.

But, when it comes to a major challenge, things mentioned above are lost. The results are long-term, and experienced by almost the entire planet earth’s residence. So, we put zero optimism to ourselves, believing that there’s nothing important we could do compared to this big pessimism following this big problem.

We say things like, “the governments are taking care of that;” “environmentalists are working on this;” “someone’s doing something.” We are so optimistic that other people are tackling this issue, yet we are so pessimistic about ourselves taking roles in it, not knowing that six billions of people are thinking the same way, leaving only one billion who either too young, too poor, or too sick to think.

We say even worse expressions like, “it’s doomsday;” “we’re cursed;” “we’ll die anyway;” “we’re moving to Mars.”

In other words, collective pessimism is billions groups of people in line, waiting to be killed by the worsening problem they refuse to take responsibility of.

It seems like, we are so impatient to see the death, to witness the destruction of our one and only home, that we don’t even want to get our hands dirty with unnecessary little tiny efforts to save our own planet.

We don’t even bother doing the least we could do: 

being optimistic.

Popped-Up Thoughts

Few days after the death of one of my best friend's father, I asked to one of my other besties, "what if that happen to us?"

"I might've cried desperately if my parents die," she answered. 

I frowned, because that's not what I mean. 

What if the death happens to us? I corrected her in silence. 

Then, I realized that people just don't come up with the thought of their being dead as easily as I do. 

Like what I did, when I rode my motorbike on a fine afternoon few weeks ago. The clouds were still hanging after the heavy rain stopped and people were filling the roads with their vehicles. Waiting for the light to turn green, I counted along the down-counter which installed above the traffic light. 

I went across the junction when the counter changed color. So did the other riders and drivers. Including a car which came from the same direction, but a different road. 

I flinched.   

The thought popped up. 

It was me, crushed by the car which just passed me by. I could see myself lying on the wet asphalt by the right side of the road, gasping for air, waiting for death to come. A crowd gathered around my body and my broken motorbike. I couldn't hear anything nor smell the blood underneath my head. I see people's faces in a blur, they tried to lift my body from the ground, but I was numb.

I'm dying. I thought. A thought inside a thought. 

A second or two later, the picture disappeared.

I put myself back together right away and keep on riding. Just like what I always did. 

Another images of my deaths also appeared when I'm not even outside, not even when I'm in a risk of being crashed by any car. 

I might be at home, watching the rain that hadn't stopped for hours and my mind would be flown away by the cold weather, to the bottom of the huge embankment next to my house. 

I pictured myself drowning deeper, touching the sticky turf and filling my lung with water. I felt the freezing water on every inch of my body. It was light and calm. 

No one told me that dying could feel this good. I thought, as my body turned blue and floated. 

I saw my mother coming from work. She found my dead body and cried painfully. Her husband was there too, standing still in shock. 

A second or two later, the image vanished.

I put myself back together right away and watched the heavy drops turn into drizzles. 

Twenty Three

Two and three make a scary number when they’re together. Two by itself is adorable. It’s curvy yet straight and children draw a duck from it. Three by itself is funny. It’s half-circle, curly and teenagers draw boobs and butts from it.

But when Two and Three are side to side, they become a nightmare. Together, they have three gigantic mouths open facing to the same direction. Three seems like teeth of a revengeful monster trying to chew Two, and Two looks like a cursed swan which head reaching for an invisible prey. None of them are kind-hearted nor forgiving. All they want is to make the world as a bloody place full of intolerance and ignorance. Beside, no one draws anything with them together.   

I’m here though, with them as a companion for the next twelve months. I know Two. I’ve been with her during the past two years. But Three, I have no idea about this guy. I used to be with him a decade ago. I surely did make a good time with him, but I was with One too, and One was the best number ever! He was so humble and gentle. He was just my type.

I’m so nervous that I’ve been counting down the days since January. The thought of Two and Three eating me alive, chopping my head and body brutally, made me wish the time to stop, or my family to forget that I was born at all.

“Look ahead,” whispered Two. Her voice was attempting, manipulative. “The time will be stopped and you will be forgotten,” she said.

“It’s just around the corner. Hang in there,” growled Three whose vowel was as hard as metal.

I don’t know how, but I found them dancing gracefully in the center of a darkened room. Right, left, right, left. A piano was played, all in minor chords: mysterious yet sentimental. No one knows who did the play. A spotlight followed their strange steps, as if it agreed with their words.

Hang in there. I echoed and nodded.

It’s odd.

I was hypnotized.

I believed that everything will be all right. They will be all right and I will be too. We, together, will seize the upcoming year beautifully just as how they dance. Though it might seem strange and scary as how they look.  

Hang in there. I repeated.