Heart be Pure; Evil be Erased, Mind be Purged; World be Saved
This essay was the literary diversions at the time of great anxiety and hardship. The writing of them was a gleeful distraction from unhappy things. Now that the rough winds has temporarily passed, it is a pleasure to find the leaves blew down and gathered among the apposite short story of A Place To Return. I will leave them as they fell.
An inspiring jargon-like title like this feels like a scandalous notion to my style of writing. It has similar points from the Japanese sense of purpose as they put it in Ikigai. Isn’t life complicated and restricting enough without abstract rules that don’t take our individual situations into account? Given that our brains won’t work a hundred percent throughout our lifetime, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that this essay is worth a read?
The short answer is: it is not. This essay serves as what poured from my thoughts as I left them adrift combined some of my memories of what I’ve learned in previous time. I am in no way an expert on any topics that I’ve written nor have the gumption to claim that I am virtuous. I don’t know if writing scattered points of wisdom from various sources would be of help to everyone. I don’t know if letting my thoughts waver to and fro, then putting aside my responsibility in the midst of changing year is the right thing to do. What’s clear to me right now is that everyone is having a brief respite for a moment before facing reality after new years, and I will be taking a part of it.
Heart be Pure
“O hallowed one, if you were to take my soul in my sleep, have mercy on it. If you let me live another day, then make me among the righteous and protect me from the most troubled of hearts.”
I wish I could sound that wise when communicating with other people. It is one quote from one of the passages in my diary that felt correlated to the rest of the subtopic below, but we’ll get there. Considering that now, I have your fraction of attention in reading.
In modern times, there is no more privacy for yourself and others. Anything you say on the platform will be used against you in the future. And thus, I refrain myself from writing and expressing too much. It used to take days — even weeks of process to get new information from someone else, particularly regarding interpersonal communication. Here’s how it usually go 40–50 years ago: You write a letter, you send it to the mailbox in your front yard, a postman will receive your letter and send them to the preferred address, you wait a couple days or week — then you get a reply; considering the other side notice your letter and has the time to write back. Now, you can simply put an emoji to a reply in case you don’t know what to say, or simply expecting a small banter with a friend. Your addressee would be bewildered to have you drawn out a big smiley face on a whole page of the letter back then.
Now, the Day of Judgment happens every day for everyone. And we — the clueless herd, are experiencing what I thought something that has never occurred before in modern human history, not even 50 years ago. We get upset over something that happened to somebody a hundred miles away. We get exaggeratingly twitchy over something that we know we don’t have. Our fingers aching to reply to that one notorious comment somebody made about us 5 years ago, or that we realize that our lives aren’t half as interesting, astounding, or colorful compared to the things that we stare on every day — the lives of others by the convenient access of modernization. At the same time, our attention span has been violently wrecked, our brains has turned into a mush, craving for a short circuit shock of dopamine. Convenience has made us fear of missing anything on any given time.
There’s always a comparison between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Whether you want to see it as a healthy competition between you and a friend, or just plain disregard of seeing someone you think doesn’t deserve the kind of happiness that they’ve shared to everyone. I think these kinds of feeling are starting to get common among ourselves, and I hate to pretend that I’ve never had it. I think it’s more important to admit that no matter however ignorant I want myself to be, among the social environment that I’ve settled in, there’s always one or two things I wish I could’ve done better after seeing someone else’s progress and happiness (of the moment).
We may let ourselves to be drowned with regret after what has happened. Even then, it’s not easy to forget on how unfair the world is unto our existence. Adding to the fact that we’re surrounded by unbelievable demand by society, and how helpless we are in most situations — it’s common to feel upset. But, nobody wants to see us upset. No family member wants to hear the struggles. No friend wanted to really know about how wrecked we are as a being.
“Good news, good news, good news.
That’s all what they wanted to hear.
No, they do not like it when I’m feeling down.
But when I’m flying, oh, it makes them so uncomfortable.
So, what’s the difference?”
I think you get what’s the next message would be, “don’t compare yourself to others”, “admit that life is not fair and it will not be fairer if you take it with hatred and jealousy” — it’s a notion as ancient as the English language. Considering that you get my point, in order to maintain the relative peace of heart, I would also like to add something that comes from the other side. That is, to be careful when sharing your story of woes and happiness with.
By all means, it is your right — and mine too — to express ourselves out there around the peers and family, you might be surprised for what I’m about to say, but I agree that happiness is infectious, an awkward meeting between people who just met might turn into a gleeful laughter after someone tried to make a joke out of something that is ridiculously outdated or uncanny. Their tomfoolery had a very bad taste to the point that you can’t help yourself but to laugh at it. The presence of camaraderie and meaningful companionship always brings us happiness that we want to share that moment to the people outside of that instance. Say — you recorded their clown-like behavior and share them to another friend, you were expecting that their response would be similar to your reaction of that moment: “That’s ridiculous, but it’s so ridiculous to the point I think it’s getting funny.”
Unfortunately, your friend does not take it the same way that you expect them to be. Maybe they had a rough day. Maybe they’re not in the mood to take that kind of joke. Maybe they’re doomed to befriend with. Now, is it your fault to not take those situations into consideration or is it their fault for not taking it as you expect? I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. It would be considered as normal to have unprecedented outcome as such, therefore, a little communication goes a long way. It does not mean that you should stop doing it. Some will take it more lightly than others. Hopefully, you have a friend that will remind you and you’ll know when you think that you’ve done something wrong.
Telling your woes to others however, I feel as I get older, tend to cause great disturbance for yourself and the people you tell your woes to. Throwing what’s inside of your heart to somebody were supposedly relieving and empowering yourself to do better. People sharing their sad stories and their travails are giving out their most sincere expression. They are, cheerful as they might think, jolly as they might want, are capable of showing their vulnerability in certain times. In a way, they let themselves shown that they’re not always a person their peers perceive them to be.
You need to be even more careful in terms of who you’re sharing these stories with. I think I’ve seen a meme a couple times where a person shares their woes and the reply was to be compared to the other person’s woes. You have to forgive me to transcribe these words from Indonesian slang to proper English:
“That’s nothing, I’ve had worse.”
“You’re not in such bad shape compared to what I’ve been through.”
“Are you in pain? Mine is bearing the greater weight than you are. Therefore, I am in greater pain!”
In the defense of these arrogant replies, it can be appropriate at certain times, but most of them, I think, will not get the person you share your woes with and yourself a better outcome from the topic anyway. It may seem that they’re looking for someone with the same situation, someone to be related with, a brother in arms, a sister in woes, but really, the wording would be just a hundred times more appropriate if you reply with something along the ways of “It is a painful world out here, but you’re not alone in this situation.” Without having to share your piece of story before they ask. They are positioning themselves as the main subject from the premise of the conversation, for God’s sake. You don’t have to pretend to relate to them by giving your own story or worse, someone else’s story.
Heart be Pure, in order to keep them pure, a cautious and mindful behavior should keep you in check, a companionship that’s not dragging you down the drains and made you realize your wrongdoing can be another way to not let it corrupt.
Evil be Erased
I think one of the novelty that comes across young adults nowadays are the rates of depression are way much higher than ever before. I’m going to try to refrain from making this essay into a research paper for the reader’s convenience. A little bit of Google search for statistics around that topic have shown clear evidence — we’re facing something heavier than what our previous generation had to endure.
Quarter Life Crisis is a steadily increasing popular term among young adults between the age of 22 to 35s. As convenience and certain luxury become more accessible to the average person, the rates of anxiety and people going out to seek refuge for a therapy increases as well. Our sense of anhedonia, grief and the weight of the world that we had to endure echoes back to the 1900s studies of Freud’s simplified definition of depression: an anger that’s turned inward to ourselves because we do not have anyone out there to shoulder to and pour what’s inside of our mind. This still rings true to this day despite more convenient access to communicate and the industrialization of the overall technology — there’s every tool for everything that we can connect with, yet we find less time and power to do so.
We can send heartfelt wishes to someone a thousand miles away in an instant, yet it felt a little bit sad when we know that we can’t meet them directly until fate has allowed us to do so. It is easy to get certain information and broaden our knowledge, knowing when a certain event will be held by our sheer will to look up for it, yet it introduced us to entities with cunning intention; we’ve become the information someone might look around for. Our addresses, personal contacts, and the things that we dearly cherish for ourselves are nothing but another data to be used against our will at any given time.
Not only the various institutions that we’ve trusted our safety had broken their promises regularly, they lie as they live, and lying will be their main selling point to another naïve person. Our closest ones, whom we consider trustworthy, made us upset with their twist and turns of emotion. Our romantic relationship might turn into a feeling of betrayal. And don’t get me started on how our prospects of future will be considering that the world has set upon their clenching fist against our odds. Surely, we can only drown in cower whilst swallowing the bitter pill of our own ignorance.
It is one thing to admit that things aren’t always fair to us. If I may be so bold — they will never, ever be fair. Evil will triumph a hundred years where Good may take throne for a very brief time. Of course, the exaggerated premise may be disarmed by the thoughts of that it isn’t all that bad, or my favorite quote — “It is what it is.”
This quote is half-assed and incomplete. If things are already is and we accept them that what it is the way they become. There is no sign of perseverance or an unquenched thirst to turn things our way so that it is can become something that isn’t what it is. Considering the expression of it is what it is a sign of a slight unsatisfactory outcome that we’ve accepted with our hearts opened.
To be mad at the world’s unfairness has become similar to yelling at the clouds in broad daylight. I think we can all agree that we want things to be a little bit better for ourselves. No matter how you perceive the world as you have your own truth worth pursuing — dealing with the world without the right tools can cause further inconvenience.
As an adult, we see Evil every day. We meet them on daily basis. We often disregard them, at some point we might even have a deal with them. To be surrounded by Evil is to be influenced to be one. As we stray further from the light, we see that the other way looks more convincing and easier to get the results that we wanted. Despite our vow to the noble cause, sometimes we look through the ways of the untrue in order to make things better. To justify it, there’s always these whispers that what we do is justified because it is for the greater good. Often times, we’re wrong. God knows how many times we’ve been wrong.
I would say that even though we succeeded in reaching our goal, with the ways of Evil, there’s always that whisper in our heart of hearts that what we’ve done isn’t necessarily fair, and we slowly become the very thing we disdain and avoid. Now, that’s the case for most people, yet I think in dealing with the unfairness of the world, there are still ways to overcome them without having to latch on to a death spiral, or to be swayed into a vicious cycle. It’s not necessarily a desperate measure every time we’re dealing with something. We don’t know what the outcome it would be, we’ve only taught the ways of doing it: both fair and unfair way.
We can’t completely free of Evil from ourselves. I’m not here to preach and give you the comforting sense that the justification of your bad deeds are able to be balanced with good ones. We can — however hard it might seem, try to learn from these ways then make generational changes in order to break free from the bounds of darkness.
Let me give you an analogy:
A working class young-adult had a wife and a child of elementary school grade, living in metropolitan area of Jakarta — a densely populated city with many walks of life. His son had been skipping classes for a couple of days. The reason? He’s embarrassed that his phone isn’t the recently released ones from a major tech brand. He’s afraid that his friend will call him a ‘poor man’s child’. And he expressed his concern that he doesn’t have as much charm and relevancy compared to the other kids with newer gadgets in the class.
Instead of talking it out with his child and try to convince him to look for a social circle that accepts him for what he is — the father, instead, throws a tantrum and whipped his own child with a belt forty two times. He then blamed his wife for ‘raising a kid so weak that he doesn’t want to go to school just because of some minor inconvenience’. He then proceed to lash out his anger towards the whole member of his family the rest of the week until his children submitted to his will. This goes on for ages, no one dared to question his method. And the father dared not to change his own.
Ten years later, by the time his child became a high schooler, he had become a juvenile that bullied other people’s kid. He stole some of the people’s belonging and sold them just to satisfy his impulses. He berated others for their looks, he looked down upon those who do not share the same lifestyle as him, the worst thing is, he’s been filled with deep hatred from his abusive father and started to abuse his peers in order to cope with his own trauma. All of which — are the very same thing his father had experienced: A troubled person surrounded by Evil, forced to submit to Evil, from which one’s emotion are repressed long enough that one will lash it out on to others. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s common in most modern family living in high levels of standards.
Given that his helpless wife and abused child submitted to the father’s misguided response in dealing with his family’s problem, and the clear evidence of literature regarding childhood imprinting, no wonder that the kid would turn out to be just like his father in terms of dealing out with harsh and complicated conflict. Children at early stages of education approaching teenager are learning cause and effect — therefore, anything that sticks to their mind or any important events that they had — will be remembered for the rest of their lives. I don’t have to tell you what would happen if someone that age realized that their world is full of rejection, and that only violence and intimidation are the few things they can adhere to.
Few things that are much easier said than done: Break the vicious cycle. Refrain using the same violence and intimidation his father taught him. Realize that doing the same thing as what his father will be inherited to his next offspring.
Evil be Erased. It would take a strong conviction to change from something malevolent to start to do Good. The elephant in the room will always be: will you ever turn the other cheek when your closest ones hurt you? Knowing you can seek revenge instead and put an eye for an eye for what they’ve done. It is important to know that Evil surrounds our daily life, and rather heavy to admit that we can do Evil, yet refrain to do so — for that takes a strong conviction. If I were not able to do Good, I would like to hope to refrain myself to do Evil, for I have known its charm and temptation.
Mind be Purged
The old days always feel better. Upon using rats as a test subjects, once the Scientist in the 1950s found out that norepinephrine — a neurotransmitter and a hormone chemical in the human body affects overall mood and use it as antidepressants. Even though it’s an outdated concept, they used to take these rats and stimulate their neurons, it presses a lever to get stimulated, and the rats will work themselves to death in order to feel pleasure by pressing the lever over and over again. Thus, in the early 1960s they started to stimulate the same area with human brain where people call it reward pathway, or pleasure pathway around those years during neurosurgery. It is unbelievable what were written in the transcript during the commotion:
“Oh my God, that’s great! That’s kind of like sex.”
“You know when you have this itch and then you finally get to scratch the areas you’ve been reaching out?”
“It’s like getting back to bed in the autumn and when your mom calls you out for a picnic at the backyard then gave you cookies while you put your pajamas on.”
They just go on like that! Where can you sign up and have this happen? Where can you get this magic juice to get an instant feeling of pleasure? It was around that time that people discovered that the shortage of norepinephrine in that part of the brain would affect their overall mood and cause depression before discovering other major hormones like dopamine, serotonin and thyroid.
All the chemicals I just listed above are important in terms of constructing our behavior and setting up our feelings. In the present day, there’s no shortage of entertainment in order to pump up the levels of these hormones momentarily before our brains are getting filled up to the extremes, then we feel bummed and dull when we don’t get them as much as we used to.
As encouraging as it sounds, in my own experience, chasing only happiness and following my passion does not necessarily make me feel glorious. We’ve been told in our childhood that we can be whatever we want, to follow our passion, to have a self esteem for ourselves, and that we should keep dreaming in order to realize them.
While I understand the importance of persistence and the value of encouragement, there’s a lot of perspective worth look upon as we learn that not everything positive that we’ve been told stays true when we grow up. Who calls a stranger to ‘not give up on their dreams’ without even knowing what it is that they’re aiming for? If you ever see Indonesian Idol or any other talent show, thousands of aspiring people show up with great expectations only to learn that they do not possess the skills they thought they have. What’s more shocking is that their genuine shock at being rejected — the realization that their passion to pursue their dreams and their ability had nothing to do with each other.
If it’s about hobby and recreational activities, I think it’s fair to let our passion where it may lead us. But, in terms of making a living and seizing what life gives us — it’s easy to forget that just because we’re passionate about something that we care about, doesn’t mean that we won’t be terrible at it. We may earn a degree that society considered useful for further studies, in several cases however, we don’t always land a preferred job after graduating due to how saturated the job market is. Millions of educated people with degrees and diplomas are competing for a relatively narrow set of opportunities that we call good careers. Meanwhile, employers are struggling to fill tons of jobs that’s nobody trained to do in higher education.
The same can be said regarding to pursue for an abstract pleasure. Which is a heavily subjective definition — and thus, I would like to remind you to take everything I write with a grain of salt. To live in a place is to live according to its standards, knowing the culture, appreciate the differences, talk like the people, do what its people do, and follow what people consider pleasurable when given the opportunity. Despite that, what’s great for others isn’t always the best for us. It’s never wrong to try out spicy food even if your taste buds aren’t used to it. It’s an invigorating new experience to try hanging out at the museum instead of living the night life at clubs in the city — then again, lest we forget to take care of ourselves and not be lost in the ways of the world.
With so many things correlating with each other, it’s easier — and more gratifying to our desires to follow what’s being hyped on by everyone. A collective joy can be separated from an individual joy. People will gather round in our highest form, when we have all the resources and knowledge, when we seem wise and virtuous. But only those who understand that real companionship isn’t only built on excess and pleasure. After all, all that glitters isn’t always gold, and we’re going to have our own rough seas to face on our own.
Mind be Purged, the following of our passion in our thoughts isn’t always the key ingredient to a meaningful life, but bringing our passion wherever it takes us might be the answer to find a greater opportunity we’ve never considered. There will be brief respite between the sojourn of our peregrination, and many entities will try to convince us to change — for better or for worse, it’s preferred that we have our own ideas while still be able to appreciate the influence of our environment so that we have a clear view and perspective to avoid hopping to the wrong train even though we’re on the right track.
World be Saved
Around the time I got into 3rd grade elementary, I’ve made up my mind that I will work as a cabinet minister of the Indonesian government. I think civic education was one of those subjects you’d learn in school then forget about by the time you reach high school and continue focusing on your own preferred studies. Luckily, the contents of its subject never really got snuffed out by the time I got into high school. Anyway, the idea of implementing good policies in order to give out better quality of life through law and politics sounded grand and noble enough. We were told to dream big, and I did dream big, at least that’s what I thought. After sudden realization that I don’t possess the same opportunity, power, and network to reach out that way, I start to prioritize to the things I can be of use. Even right now, I don’t think that I’ve set up my life as straightforward as I want them to be, there are a lot of obstacles I have to walk through, some even may seem impossible to deal with.
A president, a congressman, a high ranking public official, a diplomat, a therapist, professor, researcher, neuroscientist, company director, financial analyst, illustrator, painter, artist. I’ve thought of becoming the above occupation in my early days. Those are all noble occupation with great responsibility to maintain a civilized society. Looking back, it’s a luxury to be able to think out our past decisions and be thoughtful of them, some call it reminiscence, some call it being nostalgic, and some may call it regret. No matter how far or how deeply we let our thoughts adrift, the past will not be able to be changed. Therefore, its dark shadows are worth learning from, and its basking lights are to be cherished.
We can’t turn back the time, the travail ahead of us is like trying to step on to one stone amongst a thousand mountain, and it’s not like we’re going to be someone we dreamed of anyway, so, why bother? Why not blame those who’ve oppressed us and try to take back control? Our predicament has to be heard so that it may be brought on to justice.
By any means necessary, a systematic calamity involving a large group of people are to be dealt with haste. To be able to balance the tip of the scales and be the bearer of great powers are noble. But are we sure that we’re ready for such a task?
Before we step up on to the world stage claiming that we’re going to take charge, or, excuse my French; save this godforsaken place we call Earth, have we get our very own matter in order? Have we made peace with our family or siblings who happen to have the reputation to be doomed to spend the holidays with? Have we done our routine that’s supposedly trained our discipline? In other word — have we tried to save our own world?
I don’t think anyone has it perfect — not even the brightest of minds or the bravest of soldiers, I do think, however, that most of us in our age, has not set our own world in order. In other way, we’re a mess. We’re a huge mess created by the things we surrounded with every day and the mistakes that we’ve done. I am not trying to impose some externally imposed morality with certain agenda. I think the relevancy has been proven for ages. Johanna Schopenhauer wrote a letter to her son, Arthur Schopenhauer, famous for his essays and philosophy of pessimism and aesthetic of self-centeredness. In November 6th 1807, she said:
“…You are nevertheless irritating and unbearable, and I consider it difficult to live with you. All of your good qualities become obscured by your super-cleverness and are made useless to the world merely because of your rage at wanting to know everything better than others; of wanting to improve and master what you cannot command. With this you embitter the people around you, since no one wants to be improved in such a forceful way, least of all by such an insignificant individual as you still are… If you were less like you, you would only be ridiculous, but thus you as you are, you are highly annoying.”
Schopenhauer has been deemed as one of the most important Western philosopher of the modern age. Yet, even with great legacy that he had left for the world, within his vision — that he had shaped and built his world according to his view (whether you agree or disagree with his philosophy). His closest ones found him as an unbearable person. Thus, there is a possibility that even the most prominent of minds in the world still have things to be settled within their own.
Suppose you took the above paragraph as a message to ‘make peace with your family or be someone that wants to be liked’ — if you do think that way — you misunderstood the message. Now, to be fair, there are people who are consigned to a terrible fate where their personal matters and relationships are nothing but ruin. Their prospects of reconciliation with their family are grim. They have to face much greater challenge due to their waning physical conditions. They may have an obstruction to financial freedom. But, I believe most of us reading this essay have very little, if any, terrible conditions that made life seem unfair if compared to the true suffering of the common people.
World be Saved. Instead of feeling strayed due to the hardship from the little things that go unnoticed in the middle of our great campaign to reach our goal, I would suggest a small, yet positive changes into our routine. I kid you not. I called it a sham a couple years ago. As years have passed, it does feel like some things I would never thought of figuring out came out reachable within my grasp — although new problems and responsibility emerge, it feels way better than being clueless and lost. In a comical way, I thought: “Wow. That kind of lifted a little bit of my suffering. Although it may reduce my opportunity for spiteful revenge against the people I abhor and further the contemplation for the decisions that I’ve regretted.”
