Understanding Our Privileges: The What-Ifs in Life

(I wrote this without any means to discourage us, it’s just a reflection of how many of us forgot that we’ve been blessed with so many privileges, we started to look down on people)

 

There was an interesting debate last night on Twitter on what I titled: “kicking away the poverty ladder”. Basically, people on twitter-verse were talking about hard work and innovation being the 2 most important formula of getting away from poverty, of being successful. This whole thread started with one woman, who successfully overcome her money-lacking life through excelling in education, making sure that her dreams never fade, persistence in her work and at the end, BAM! she made it to the top of her career.

It sounds like a Cinderella kind of story (minus the prince charming). It may turn into a hit if somebody made it into a Netflix movie.

 

But then, I was so intrigued by this issue, I can’t simply let it slide.

Probably because I was so infected by Poor Economics, an amazing book by Banerjee and Duflo (they also did their research in Indonesia, btw). This book described that not only poverty is hard to define, but also not that easily to overcome.

It is not always each individual problem, but something structural beyond their power, that lead them to wherever they are right now.

 

Poverty and road to be successful, in fact, is not that simple.

You can’t “just” kick your poverty-stricken life with merely hard work and innovation. This is by no mean that both are trivial. Both are EXTREMELY essential for making it through our life, but, in my truly humble opinion, poverty is much more than that.

There are so much more within our life whether it was socially or culturally-construct, that led to so many privileges we have now earned.

That in case one variable in our life changes, the future might not be the same.

 

I’ll take an example of my own father.

He was born in a rural village called Tana Tombangan, located in South Tapanuli, North Sumatera. He is the last children out of 6. His mother was a clove farmer who owned a small farming land. While making it through his basic education, my father helped his mother on managing and harvesting his family crops.

55 years later, out of my grandmother’s children, 2 made it to the capital city, escaping poverty trap, whilst the rest still live in the village, barely living above poverty line.

 

So, what made the difference? What kind of factors made my father kicked away his poverty ladder while others don’t? Yes, his determination towards success may be one of the major factors that made him success in life, and he managed to win scholarships to cover his education fund, but is that all?

 

Let’s start with the obvious one. Gender.

When “gender equality” statement was not even there 50 years ago, a family especially in rural areas considered girls merely as a helper in the family and a potential baby-maker in the future, making cooking-cleaning-serving as their must-have capabilities to survive in life. That is why, parents who had more children than their fair share of income, tend to prioritize their boys than girls to go to school.

And as you can guess, 3 of my grandma’s children who didn’t make it through the poverty line, are women.

Moreover, it is not only the matter of parental choice of who’s going to school. It is also the manner of gender definition and worth in the eyes of different cultures.

The way each gender roles were implicitly defined in their boxes of responsibilities.

Maybe my aunts understood that their roles in the future are limited as housewives and the mothers of their future children. That they will have “men” to fuel their house with money. That learning bunch of theories in the school won’t give them any means because their future is already set (and maybe the things they learned in school doesn’t give them a clear design of other possible future?)

They grew up with no expectation on their own abilities, no pressure from their own families either, so they stopped going to school at certain point. Meanwhile, boys were going to school because they know there are people, especially their families, who are looking for their supports in the future. Maybe, just maybe, his education will change the future of their family.

This socially-construct “push”, at the end, made my father survive poverty.

 

Then on another point, Health.

Just what if, what if, back then my grandmother suffered from health problem that badly needs professional treatment. Or an endemic such as dengue fever, stroke the entire villages, they must set aside part (maybe bigger part) of their income for healthcare purposes. There’s no such thing as universal healthcare insurance back in the days, so they may end up hiring healers, if they hatedgovernment-owned institutions that were famous for overcharging their patients, but the bigger possibilities are these healers even charged them more than they could.

In other case, my single-parent grandmother probably never knew simple strategy on preventing diseases, such as bed net or free vaccination, or menstruation pads, that may save her and her entire family from outbreak or diseases.

 

A sudden added expense in their already-so-tight income, may lead to my fathers being pulled out of school and worked as a full-time farmer so that he can help covering the medical expense.

But then, my grandma lived for a considerably healthy life. My father didn’t need to stop his education to help his mother or take his mother to hospital. He didn’t have to be entangled with loan shark, who probably will mess up his concentration on school he just couldn’t be a diligent student he turned out to be today.

 

Another factor, the fate of their business.

My grandmother has made great choices in her life in terms of businesses: she chose clove, instead of other crops like paddy, where the price of clove on those days remain high as an impact from tobacco demands that increase significantly each year. She also diversified her business, opened small stall in front of her house that sold varieties of necessities. She invested her money on gold, as it was the only way that she knew to save her money for her children.

Then, just what if, my grandma’s crops suddenly infected from weird crop diseases, because they don’t invest (and don’t have enough money) in fertilizer. Failing in her agriculture businesses, she would end up with no money to provide her family let alone trying to extend her source of income, then what would she do?

She will (again) start looking for loan.

Do you understand how hard it was to find institutions that will give you loan with reasonable price in rural areas back then, or even now? Do you know how hard it was for farmer with just small amount of land that is failed to produce something, to find help from formal financial institution?

Then the only option there is loan shark, isn’t it? It’s easy, it’s there, they probably your close relatives you knew were loaded. With no skills on calculating how much interest she should pay for each loan, taking the first loan may mean the neverending debt, passed on to generations to generations, and the cycle of poverty goes on.

But those cases didn’t end up happening.

 

They were just a small example of how some people have different faith from others. There are still so much more I haven’t discuss yet, how my father was born not in a discriminated-race that forced him to live in an exile, for instance, or other things in his life that he didn’t personally choose, he just born into it.

 

 

In the bitter fact, there are people who clearly relied on “bigger hand” if they wanted to get away from poverty. The people who, if they have access to universal healthcare insurance, free vaccine, a fair-financial institution, or IF there are counselings on the importance of fair treatment to every gender, or simply flyers and free training on how to grow crops, then maybe, the faith of their life can change dramatically.

We never realize how things that we thought didn’t matter, after all, was everything that others in different side of the world, dreamed of.

They are in fact, the redemption from their life’s misery.

 

I made this reflection on the fact that, yes, I’m totally privileged. I grew up with both parents who, despite their hard childhood, they made sure I can satisfy my thirst of learning. But I tried my best (still do) not to look down on people, simply because they don’t work hard enough. There are tons of reasons behind every man’s problem.

 

Let us then be thankful for our privilege and acknowledge them; they can be in various forms: being a social majority, being born in economically stable family, being born in a year where gender equality has come to term, or simply being healthy.

Because things were totally different if we don’t have that.

By acknowledging them, hopefully you and i can work harder, strive for better, without looking down on people. Instead, we can lift each other up, help others to give solutions on things that they simply couldn’t get a grip on by their own hand.

 

 

To be Develop is to be given a freedom, after all (Quoting the awesome Mr Sen).

Freedom to live up to our upmost potential.

 

The Foundation of Faith: Flourishing Tolerance and Solidarity through Emerging International Leader Program

(Long overdue post. Better be posting this before my memory fades, like it usually did)

 

Religion for some, if not most people, is part of their human identity.

Sadly, recently we saw an emerging trend in published articles about societies destruction happened under the name of religion: wars, discrimination, assaults, to say the least. Although discrimination and destruction due to negative stigma against certain religion has happened since thousands of years before, for instance Crusades in Middle Eastern and Holocaust in Europe, but the fast pace of internet made news traveled faster than we could ever imagine: we can see hundreds of images about Rohingya refugees in Myanmar or the abduction of young girls by Boko Haram in Africa, in just a split second.

This chaotic yet fully-informed world we currently living in has exposed us to the cruelty of human race around the world, where solidarity and sympathy has been drowned under hatred and thirst upon domination. Some played the “Majority versus Minority” narratives, where greed and apathy become their faith, rather than love and compassion towards the weak, just like what all religion originally taught. Negative stereotypes these narratives brought on religion has turned human race off religion. Nowadays, it’s quite common to see Twitter posts where people suggest for religion to be vanished first to create world peace. This statement on itself is depressing, as religion becoming more insignificant on peace building; that religions were blamed for major destruction that we are having today.

Cumberland Lodge, located in Windsor Great Park, is a charity foundation under the Queen of England herself which provides a forum for young leaders to discuss how we as a citizen of the world and future policymakers can play our parts on enhancing tolerance and inclusivity. 50 of us were chosen among Chevening and Commonwealth scholars to join a 9-days retreat, fully funded by Government of the UK, where we conduct discussion regarding varieties of beliefs and religion from the perspective of human rights rather than its religious aspects. It is such a unique atmosphere as we were invited into intense debates and discussions about current issues around the world, which on itself is a refreshment from our daily activities of reading theoretical journals. Issues brought by Cumberland Lodge also intriguing: for example, we were asked to find our own solution towards headscarf banning in workplace, or what is our opinion towards businesses who discriminate against gender minority or LGBTQ community due to their religious beliefs, or the usage of religious symbol in public places. Some questions might look like a vague question, but through these discussions, solutions offered could be varied, from how individuals can be part of the solution to state-level solutions.

Moreover, Cumberland Lodge also invited amazing speakers from different representation of religions. One of my favorite speakers throughout the conference is Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, a well-known blogger and author, who talked about her difficulty as an Asian-race who was born and raised in the UK and how she was trying to be accepted in her surroundings. She also shared us her own experience on how she adjusted her life to be the face of modernity and a young Moslem without leaving her faith behind. This experience in my opinion is relatable to all young adult who wanted to be both religious and actively engage with the modern world. She shows us that modesty and modernity could walk side by side.

Another memorable session is when my fellow friends told her own experience of escaping Yazidi genocide in Iraq, where persecution towards Yazidi ethnic groups has costs her dozens of relatives. It was a different experience to merely read news of Yazidi genocide on medias to hear it personally from someone you knew. At that moment i knew, that we were so far from achieving global peace in this world and I need to take parts on making sure our future will be different from what people experience in the past.

Cumberland Lodge successfully creates such a diverse discussion, as delegates were coming from different field of expertise, not limited from laws or development studies but also from medical, engineer, finance etc. We were also discussing the complexity behind freedom of religion and beliefs: such as recognizing that not only monotheist religions were existed in this world, or how we should face the confusion when religions mixed with culture, nationality or ethnicity. Another interesting topic we covered in this forum is how religions should stand to empower women and gender minorities, knowing that more countries were imposing rules that prohibit or require certain kind of clothing or practice such as vaccination, headscarf, abortion etc. It is indeed controversial topics but also important to be discussed, which made places like Cumberland Lodge became an essential space that offered us a safe place to discuss, express our opinion and hopefully could establish a better solution for each issue.

Knowing what impact this conference has brought to me, I am hoping that similar forum that focused on creating inclusivity and tolerance could be enhanced in Indonesia and South East Asia countries. South-East Asia is famous for its diversity in terms of cultures and religions and both has huge impact on societies and states, which made forum like Cumberland Lodge is urgently needed to establish societal harmony in South-East Asia. Furthermore, this forum taught me that as a majority somewhere out there, we might become a minority. If we are a minority in our home country, we might become a majority in other countries, so there is absolutely no point on taking advantage of our current position to discriminate others in order to sustain the life of our groups. At the end, there is no minority or majority in this world, because at first, we are the citizen of this world.

Contracting Popular Beliefs

People kept barging about having the sense of humanity, celebrating equality, understanding the marginalized, for years now. The so-called “millennial” generations are known for their openness: open for the fluids of human sexuality, the diversity of religions and ethnicity, the various sizes of human bodies, and other issues that sounds strange for baby boomer generations, but has garnered so much attention these days. We’ve gained so much in this century, same-sex marriage were increasingly accepted in many countries and states, agnostic and non-believers gained political powers in some countries (even countries with deep connection with religion), women were taught to be vocal for sexual abuse, disabled citizens were given facilities and news nowadays even transcribed its message to sign language. Inclusivity, they said, was the key to millennial development.

However, have you ever wonder, if these “improvements” were merely propagandas that millennials built, upon the accessibility of social media, where news travel faster than anything else, without even changing our core conscience, our deepest believe that our own, whether it is our ethnic, race or religion, is the one that matters?

Have you ever wonder, whether we celebrated this human development, because we are currently in a good atmosphere and financially stable, where nothing should be blame, where we do not have to worry about our continuity, and we just seek for issues to “improve” because, well…we are already better off.

Have you ever wonder, IF our national economic deteriorate suddenly, would us accept those outsiders: those who are different from our faith, those from different class, different ethnicity, or would us blame them for the increase of poverty level; every deficiencies happened in our neighborhood?

Are we, a group of human being, are creatures of acceptance, or are we just those opportunist creatures who were accepting when situation are right, but back to our selfish self, when things turned sour?

I was reading one of the creepiest books about Indonesia history, discussing Dayak-Madura ethnic war, Chinese abolition during 1997 economic crisis and communist elimination during 1960s, where it stroke me badly how we were so easy to provoke in times of crisis. Groups of people were so easy to point their fingers to others when they fall. Same with what happened with refugees’ problems, same with holocaust in WW2. We were so scared of being in poverty, being on the brink of a breakdown. First, human tend to target those who are different from us, and put a mark on them: “this people, who drag us this hell”.

When economic crisis hit Indonesia in 1997, Indonesian blamed the entire Chinese descendant, who built their businesses from scratches, just because a small number of them became rich under Suharto rules. Dayak blamed Madurese when they built businesses upon their ancestors land. German blamed Jewish people for being educated and having businesses, when recession hit their country and left most of them unemployed. American blamed Mexican immigrants for the rising of criminal cases in their homeland, when their super-economy title has been stripped off and given to the so-called “uncultured” Asian, who challenged the world with their technological advancement and factory expansion. The UK blamed the EU open border policy for their economic deterioration, where large number of European came to their land while the over-price UK labors now left with no job. We blamed the rise of LGBT groups when disaster hit our country, just because we have to find something “unusual” to put all of our hatred and frustration.

We strangely became so selfish in times of crisis and forgot about values we tried to live in. We, in truth, are not so easy for changes. Are we just pretending that we believe on humanity, while in truth, we believe on us and us only?

How do we change our collective selfishness? Because one selfless body will not mean anything if a collective agreement pushed us to go on another way.

Education is NOT enough.

2 Months Before Leaving 25

I just can’t believe I’ve almost leaving 25 years old life behind.

What a roller coaster ride.

This year I learned by leaving on my own (again); by visiting a lot of places for the sake of learning, not only travelling without purposes; by reading tons of interesting works from famous yet brilliant people; and later understanding the meaning of colonialism beyond “yes we’ve been colonized for more than 350 years old”.

But still, I have so many things on my mind I need to explore. One thing for sure, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with my career. People say that this is mid-life crisis, but I think this is me learning, and discovering, what impact I want to deliver to the world, to the country, to the family, to my own self.

I’m extremely glad that I choose my degree, above what people THINK I should choose based on my career and my previous education background. I’m glad that I took this decision, for this year I learned according to what I’m interested on reading, despite the possibility that this 1-year learning won’t give any impact on my current career. I took this master, purely to satisfy my hunger for learning something completely new.

First time in my life, I don’t consider salary and career position as my main consideration to learn. Hell yeah, I felt so liberated.

I’m still on the brink of finding what I wanted to do and understanding what I’m truly capable of. One thing for sure, I want to discover projects that made me really looking forward to tomorrow, projects/jobs that made me realize how important I am towards everyone else in the projects, projects beyond financial achievement.

 

Still 25. (Hopefully) still a lot of years to learn.

 

Angel of Death

I was about to write this a couple weeks ago, when a small gathering brought up old news to the table: the chaotic situation of healthcare industry.

The fake vaccines, the ill-fated doctors, messed up hospital administration, supported by the bubble of new registries in medicine school (which has no credible accreditation, just a promise of graduation paper and title of eligible medicine graduate) have just blown my mind.

I’m petrified to learn that people, even in the most ‘angelic’ industry, played fate on others life like it’s just a piece of meat.

 

 

Fake vaccines, same as lots of other unregistered medicine circulated in this country, has proved how this industry has an incredibly weak foundation while holding whole nation’s fate at his hands. As one of the people under this foundation, truthfully I was concerned and sadly, trusted nothing.

If vaccines, which got injected to most of the children in Indonesia, got hijacked, I wonder how easily my daily dose of vitamin c, or paracetamol to my headache, got smudged or even poisoned with unknown substance. I was living in the big city, yet got ‘deceived’, so how was the fate of other children in the most remote area, who only got their medicine from specific pharmacy, listened to one unregistered local doctor?

They know nothing, paid everything, yet received nothing.

 

Where is government, or ministry, or whatever they called to supervise this mess around pharmacology? Was medicine supposedly needed a strict regulation, from the production, distribution, until it reached its final users? Medicine, as I quoted from local newspaper, was chemical substances with pharmacological reaction, which can cause either improvement or damages on human races.

Were doctors and nurses even understood what kind of substances they used?

 

 

Ill-fated doctor was another case.

I understand quite frankly, that healthcare industry is a complex matter; everyday new symptoms from the evolution of human genetics come to the surface, but hey, enough with the excuse! People (I mean, millions of people) paid this industry whole lot of money. Have we heard enough improvisation, or enough scientists (not just doctors, I meant those expert who DID research) do enough research? This line of ‘smartest’ people in this nation has been paid a LOT of money, they HAVE TO do their extended job AND research more than ordinary people with ordinary job. I have one grandmother who deceased lately, with one of the main reason was doctor getting their national holiday and could not provide their services.

Have they learned that people’s life has no holiday? These hearts would not stop their beat, even when we pray or sleep.

This just one case in thousands of thousands cases in this industry. Every person has their own personal dreadful experiences.

 

Sometimes I was thinking how scary it is to know that from the beginning, we have no idea what are those substance that coming through our throat. Healthcare industry was one of the most complicated industries, so commoners like us could not easily understood from the start: the diagnosed, script of medicine we got, how much money we spent, and how those ‘expert’ judgment worth our money, yet we gave our life on this handful of people.

To add the horror, one book I read lately, The Good Nurse, basically told story about nurse who had mental problems, yet still working in healthcare industry for years, messing with patients medications in sober condition, caused death of hundreds of people under his supervisions, all because patients DON’T understand what was injected to their veins. Hospitals and doctors, not even care.

Really, the craziest people were coming right from the doors of this industry.

 

 

I’m trying to find how this tangle could end, and I came to these comparisons.

Compared to European countries, I’ve sensing what was “messing” with this industry.

In Indonesia, Doctors were God.

In Europe, Doctors were Human.

In Germany, for example, doctors has no shame to open a book, take a moment to do their research in their personal library, or even do their research on the inter web, asking other professional experiences on the same cases.

They knew human mind DO mistakes, and they were indeed humans too.

They knew a symptoms could mean thousands different kind of sickness. By researching, or even without shame asking advice from others (in front of their patients), they knew they could minimize these common mistakes. Most of the time, they could only handle 8-10 patients a day, because 1 patients with ‘headache, stomachache, cough’ could take them an hour of deep analysis.

What I appreciated most on how these western doctors did elaborate their diagnoses, is how they showed us commoners how their decision were taken right from the resources (books, expertise). This shows us how they treated us as equal, not some commoners who knew nothing, understood nothing, yet trusted everything. They even explain how the expenses they asked us to pay were coming from: how much their diagnoses valued (this differed on how complicated our sickness were), why they choose certain medicine and how much they costs.

They valued us as King.

Different in Indonesia when Doctors were valued as King and worst, God.

God KNEW everything, and didn’t have to do the ‘read and study’ like commoners did. Headache means headache, stomachache means diarrhea, and cough means inflammations. This wheal goes on and on, spinning around without explanation. Yet, Doctors got one of the highest paying jobs in the country.

 

 

Well, I could not blame this entire chaos to Doctors or those who worked on this industry. We did not have health ministry just to sit around and do nothing. And for the record, our pharmacology has a respected position in the world for having a complex regulation. But did this regulation get implemented once and for all? Give people a throughout explanation on the difference between medicines whether they were expensive or cheap, show them that medicines that coming through your supervisions were trustable, so when they earned your trusts, those illegal or ‘herbal’ medicine were banished naturally.

Show consistency on how you fought illegality and supervise the circulations of medicine.

Show people that you deserved their trusts.

 

 

 

To all people who worked in this industry:

May you find your inner willingness to treat first, not to ask; to find a solution with careful examination, not to rush things; to always bring comfort to people with right judgment and explanations. And most importantly: to NEVER EVER stop learning, because the faith of this nation is right within your hand.

Foolsophy

we are once a wanderer of our own, chasing what’s on our mind within our own thoughts, solves our worriedness in loneliness, seeking the power of melancholic writing or searching for romanticized-lyric, just to give some relieve in our heavy-unshared thinking.

then we bumped into someone, when suddenly this customs are, well it’s not really an obligation, but you know you need some adaptation.

adjusting, to share what’s on your mind, to let them wanders around your thought with you, to welcome them on your world.

and somehow, it wasn’t as hard as you predict it would be. there’s still some things you keep to yourself, which is fairly humane I think. but after all, those fences you thought no one else could break, is piece by piece flew by without you even noticing.

 

 

that’s one person you talking about.

what about others, that came along with it?

is your fence wide enough to welcome those? or do YOU have the willingness to open your fence for them? are you comfortable enough, to adjust your highly-privatized life and turn it into a complete opposite of it?

 

human relationship possessed a completely strange vibe. you could switch over to a different personality you have never know ever existed. you suddenly have power to give in your human nature, and give way for others characteristic to penetrate you. you NEVER wanted to change things in that particular person, that never bother you in the first place, they are still as perfect as you found them way back them. you LOVE how they found comfort on others, as much as you found it on your own. then you started to consider, are you  too “exclusive”, too picky, or just vibrate in a completely odd frequency compare to others? you tried to change yourself, thinking maybe the exact problem lies within you and your stupid fences.

 

but then the question next is, are you absolutely pleasant with it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“you could still be

what you want to be,

what you said you were,

when you met me” 

Medicine-Daughter

 

 

Refugee 101 (On a Stranger Point of View)

Refugees:
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..”
(1951 Refugee Convention in Genève, article 1)

 

 

This particular word, Refugee(s), might sound so familiar for you, as every newspaper nowadays has marked them on their headlines several times of a month, or a week even.
Their photos spread everywhere, from children to older women, with different kind of skin colors and racial status, each struggled the worst condition in human race today: the loss of human rights.

 

 

In prior year, there are millions and millions of people flown from their own countries seeking for temporary shelter with reasons like religion clash, civil wars, poor economic condition and many other reasons.
The conditions of their country seems so dreadful, they even have guts to cross ocean with minimum preparation and terrible vessels, which delivers another sad news such as sinking vessels loaded with hundreds of poor condition of people, looking for asylum (terms scholars used to call shelter for refugees).
Some stories just irritable in a sense of “are you even human to even do that to another” kind of way, when another countries simply close their doors to these refugees, even after seeing their ripped clothes or tired face after such a long journey away from home.
Possible host countries are now openly rejecting the arrival of refugees in their countries, tightening their borders with tense stand-off police, making it impossible to find a new home, and stating clearly that they are opposed refugees in their land.

Not to mention there are people, migrant who only seek for “more”, are now utilize this chaotic situation to cross neighboring countries border with the intention only to migrate easier, which only causing more trouble and hardening the life of refugees.

 

 

Really, sometimes human are sooo brilliant, and smarter when they are in trouble, or in hard time.

 

 

And more we dig about this case; one crucial word seems to be the page-turner headlines.
Religion

In most case, dissimilarity in religion leads to inability to accept new people. Which is, good Lord, aren’t we already living in 21 century, where diversities celebrated and equality honored?

European and American are even shamefully build this “phobia” upon certain religion, continues to create riots voicing their refusal of these people.
Like, really?
Even worst, similarity in religion even, could not open the eyes of humanity.
Ethnic and religion cleansing, which is nonsense in every aspect of human conscience, are the reason of Rohingya became refugees in first place, but these reasons seems nothing to neighboring countries who claimed themselves “enormous” in number of people with same religion as what these refugees believes.
You should notice them, who has the same religion as you, as your family, am I right?
Is that the basic constitution of a religion?

 

 

Religion is NOT the reason to blame. Human did.
People fear of instability. People fear of strangers. People fear of insecurity. People fear that these poor people will turn wealthy, snatched their job opportunity, and won’t go back to their country, just like what the Turks now experienced in Germany.

 

Faster we run to liberality, faster we backed right where we started.
Or even further back.
What’s different now with isolated ghetto in Europe, or Berlin Walls, or the fear of Jewish community taken control of European economy back in 1930s?
Goodbye Schengen. Goodbye Union. Goodbye free trade. Goodbye solidarity

 

 

 

But refugee is not as simple as morality anymore.

It’s about ego combined with sense of security topped with greed.
Government, people nowadays call it.
Morality came in 100th place, they even discussed on “trading” refugees to 3rd party countries, when the host country could not or would not accept them.
Did you see the “shelter” or can we say remote island Australian has built to cage the unwanted refugee?
Dreadful, when you imagine kids locked up in a tiny island.
Not to mention how shelters are now privatized by their government and people are making business out of it.

Hell.
Refugees are people; they are not products to be packaged at the lowest price and sold to the highest bidders, guys.

 

 

Somehow, when I read those articles, this tiny part of my heart felt, sadly, relieved.
Relieved that I don’t have this necessity to ‘choose’ to whom I’ve belonged to.
Relieved that I always been welcome to this country I called home.
Relieved that I could educate myself, praise whatever whoever wherever I want, deliver opinion and express myself in every possible way I could think of.

(Anyway, I read one article that could sooth my heart. It’s about religion as part of solution, where thousands of people out there already believe it as driving force behind wars.
Religious leader should gathered up and conduct interfaith discussion more often so that they could acts as a peacemaker and reconciler, as the voice of conscience, to make sure that Religion is here in this world to unite, not divide humanity)

Uninspired

Yep.

Year-End

I wish:

1. This childish part of me would be disappeared, not instantly but day by day. Stop being an ignorant brat; do everything much faster than I was before; most importantly to be able to think about others first than mine.
2. I could sectioned my head to dozens counterparts that work individually, so that I could think million different things at the same time.
3. I have nerves to do, to speak, to act as what my head asked me to do.
4. My head could operate rationally once in a while. Especially when Life doesn’t need your heart to take part on making decision.
5. I could be the reason for someone’s happiness, the source of somebody’s laugh, the one that relieve pains. It doesn’t need to be major, small things do have impact even just tiny little bit.

I’m good at making lists.
Terrible at turning it to reality.

Capability

The greatest gift God ever gave to humanity is the capability of surviving.

The urge to protect yourself from harm; the urge to have chances; the urge to live.

It not always have to be some major act, things like searching for free food when you have no money on your pocket, or scream your lungs out when something scared you off, or even to push yourself to cheat on test when you ran out of time.
These acts, are the way your body telling you to survive, because yes they wanted to have chances.

Your body and mind believe that there will be something more, hopefully better, after those moments.

So this morning, I read these moving articles about these extraordinary children called feral children.
These children have bravery and willingness to live, higher than any other people you might ever know, since they survived themselves by living with animals.

From the tiniest age, they already taught themselves how to live, to eat, to crawl like animals, just so that they could live another day.

And it’s not a matter of a week or two, but years of survival.
One child, for instance, whose life already transmitted into dozen kinds of documentaries in Ukraine, found living with dogs for 6 years, she can barely spit any kind of human voices when found and preferring to act as her companion: dogs.
On other cases, this Cambodian girl, who spent most of her life in a rare jungle for almost 19 years, was found in the jungle. After living as “human” for 3 years, she still craves the needs to live as one of the jungle community.
Fled back several times to the nearest jungle, slept for days in farms, refused to speak and clothed, she continues to show her longing for her old life in the jungle.

As I read further case after case of these feral children, when pity surrounded the news and discussion board as they continue to find ways to redirect these children to the normal terms of humanity, I felt sad instead.

Sad because, what if these children found comfort not within human, but within animals?

What if these constant compulsions to make them as people in general, are actually making them frustrated and happiness that people wanted them to feel are ceased instead?

Happiness is subjective.
We can’t generalize things that made one person happy will create the same result to the others.
We might think that the ability to speak, to walk straight, to talk to others, can create happiness.
But others, strange as it is, might find happiness in the middle of silence, in the moment when their skin touches dirt and soil, in the comfort of animals as companion.

People who never been introduce to proper urban life, who spent most of their life living under poor condition with no technologies, might be happier than us who has been exposed to many different kind of modern living.
With “not knowing” what they have been missing,they ARE happy beyond words.
The way we taught them that there’s so much more out there, on the other hand, is may somehow increasing their span of happiness level and at the same time decreasing their state of happiness.
Knowing more, making them feeling less, if that’s make sense.

Prosperity is, suddenly, a warranty of achieving happiness.

 

 

What made me even sadder after reading site by site of these feral children, is not the condition these kids have been living.
But how, after being back to humanity, some kids found the companions of rural animals and bonds they’ve made are far better than human they have been known.

Is their home so bad, they rather spent their entire lifetime with creatures who know nothing but how to survive?
Is human love, things we celebrate and proud of the most, somehow can be weaker than animal instinct?


To read more about these incredible and brave children:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/videos/feral-children/
http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/the-girl-in-the-window/750838
And Wikipedia always a good source of curiosity 🙂