Sebuah kisah. Di sebuah sekolah ada 2 orang murid yang sedang bertengkar. Yang satu karena ujiannya mendapat nilai 100 tidak segan segan memamerkan nilai ujiannya kepada orang lain. Yang satu lagi ngomel-ngomel karena merasa orang itu terlalu sombong, padahal orang itu bukan yang paling pintar di kelas.

Melihat pemandangan seperti itu, John berkata kepada Michael : “Lihat tuh 2 orang itu yang satu suka pamer, yang satu iri. Dua duanya gak ada bagusnya tuh. Gimana menurut lu?”

“Menurut gua sih, si A haus popularitas, si B ngiler liatin orang sukses, si C merasa dirinya paling benar, dan si D kurang lebih sama seperti si C. haha…”

Mendengar jawaban Michael, John menunjukkan mimik bingung. “Apa maksudmu? Siapa C dan D?” tanyanya.

“Si C itu kamu, dan si D itu saya. hahahahaha”

##

Seringkali kita merasa paling benar diantara semuanya, namun terkadang kita sering kali juga melakukan banyak kesalahan.
Dalam cerita tersebut Michael jelas-jelas melihat dari raut muka John bahwa ia sedang ‘merendahkan’ teman-temannya yang sedang bertengkar.
Walaupun kedua teman itu jelas-jelas salah – menggunakan ego diri sendiri untuk merendahkan mereka jelas juga bukan hal yang baik.

Lalu pertanyaan terakhir, mengapa Michael mengumpamakan dirinya sebagai D yang sama jeleknya seperti C (John).

Jawabannya simple, karena Michael tidak ingin John merasa marah atau tersinggung, jadi dia menempatkan dirinya sendiri di posisi yang sama seperti John.

Lalu apa yang kita pelajari hari ini?

Masing-masing orang memetik pelajaran mereka sendiri-sendiri.

Tony : Hi,… how are you doing?
Jessica : I’m doing fine. No thanks for asking. (*wow.. that’s rude)
Tony : Errr… do you know what day is today?
Jessica : Yeah.. Monday, August 23, 2001 . Look at the calendar you moron !!
Tony : I i i see… (*want to cry but feel too ashamed)

That’s Tony. No one likes him. His life is so much miserable.

Now, let’s look at another case.

Jessica is the most popular girl in the school. Everyone knows her and everyone admire her a lot. December 20 is her birthday, and everyone greet her at that day.

But, can you imagine how much person greet her at that day?

John : Jessica, happy birthday. Wish All the best for you.
Jessica : Oh, thanks.
Steven : Jessica, happy birthday. Wish you all the besttt !
Jessica : Thanks.

And it keeps going on. People keeps coming and coming to greet her..

After 100 greetings

Jessica : Ugh… it’s enough. Thanks..

1000 greetings.

Jessica : Oh, guys… can’t you stop already??

2000 greetings.

Jessica : hoexx… (*puke)

and at last at 2500 greeting, she fainted because of the noise. LoL

That’s two extreme example of two different people with different condition. None of them ultimately happy with what happened to them.

That’s why in life we always need to seek balance. Without it, you won’t feel good. You need to know your own limit, and you must know when to stop.

It’s only that simple afterall.

Recently I got a chit and chat with a girl. I pointed out some of her weakness, and her response is … predictable. She said she isn’t angry with me and she also said that I have the right to think that way and the hell she care about it.
Wooh… that’s bold statement and although she didn’t admit it I can say that she is fully angered with my way telling her about what I think about her.

Some people respect honesty, but some can’t just accept it with sincerity. Even though they said that they’re not angry, from the way they give the answer everyone can tell that they’re angry about it. Truth is good, but not everyone have a big enough heart to contain it. Well said

So, I think in the future I must change my strategy. Instead of telling the “sour truth” using themselves as examples, I’ll rather use myself as example, let the “sweet truth” become theirs.

If they’re not mature enough to see their own weakness, then it must be me who has to be mature enough to show them how I fix myself to become a better person.

Everyone are trying too seek happiness for their own. Some get it by hurting others, some by ‘selling’ some act so they can get more attention from other people.

My teacher always said that we’re social ‘creature’, meant that we can’t live by our own. We always need other people assistance in order to live ‘properly’.

That’s true. But I am always questioned myself, even if we meant to be social creature like what my teacher said, does it mean that we’re also need to let our happiness determined by other people.
Can’t we just possess our own happiness without too much depends on others? It seems impossible, isn’t it?

But it made me thinked about one thought. We’re too much depended on others because we’re expecting too much from others. By other words, we can say that we’re a lot more receiving than giving. We tend to give only for an expectation to get payback for our merit. That’s exactly why I often heard people said : “There’s no free lunch in this world”.. ?!

Of course there’s some exception in here or there, but that’s how we generally speak about what ordinary people thought about happiness.

Simply said, you can think about it this way : It’s imposibble for a person to treat you with kindly manner if you’re always rude to them.

However, living in this world you can’t expect too much from others. Sometimes your friend might expect you to care for them, sometimes they scolded you for being too much meddling into their business. You can’t have one way to treat everyone the same so they won’t disappointed at you.

And that’s how we feel depressed all the time. At one side, we must accomodate their expectation for us, and at the other side we’re also expecting too much from them.

It’s tiring, isn’t it?
So, why don’t we try to focus more on ourself. How we should feel contented with what we have right now, instead of beefing about everything else which is out of reach.

Woohh… I didn’t mean that we must seperate ourself form social intercourse, but what I meant is we should try to develop happiness inside ourself.

I think it’s enough..

Maybe they dislike you because you didn’t meet their expectation
Maybe they dislike you because you’re unwilling to help them
Maybe they dislike you because you’re not agree with what they said
Maybe they dislike you because you’re such a boring person
Maybe they dislike you because of your social intercourse
Maybe they dislike you because you’re too much care about saving than to have fun with them
Maybe they dislike you only because you’re too ugly to become their friend
Maybe they dislike you only because they can’t stand with noises you made when you sleep

Anyone can dislike you. There’s a lot of reason they can made to justify their dislikeness.
That’s why some old folks always said : You can not satisfy everyone needs.
As long as what you do won’t collide with moral value, you can do your best to help them.
You can’t control people heart, but you can do much with your own.

Why wasting so much time and energy hating someone who didn’t “pay you back”?
Why wasting so much energy hating someone who always mock you if you know that hating them won’t stop them?
You can work on your own way to prevent anyone from hurting you, but you can’t do it by harming them.
You can’t solve hatred with hatred, because it will only get worse.

I think that in life sometimes we don’t have much choices.
It’s not easy to breakthrough deadlock situation.
Sometimes we need to bear the pressure, handling all the unconvenience by ourself.
Sometimes we don’t have a choice other than to be patient.
And it’s a pity that not everyone have enough patience to handle the situation.
But at least we must try.

The most valuable thing that we can get is peacefulness.
Only when your mind in peace that you can avoid too much strain in your mind.
Peacefulness is not something everyone could attain. That’s why it’s precious.

But it’s a pity that some people often think it’s the same with boredom.
It’s completely different.
Boredom is the result of restless mind.
Peacefulness attained by mindfulness. It’s a state when your brain relaxed and freed from strain but no sleeping.
It’s a state when you’re fully aware of your own consciousness and everything surrounding.
Only that way that your mind will free from any kind of worldly traps, which in this case resulted the boredom.
Your mind free by itself that you don’t need to wandering around just to cure your boredom.
What you’re seeking is already there and your mind can see it clearly without being too much affected by it.
This is what we called freedom.
And that is when you’ll realized that most of people in this world live in their own prison.
They’re prisoned by their own will, or maybe we can say it their own ignorance.

Do you expect freedom?
Then let your mind free, even from your own conviction.
But always be careful that sometimes when we think we’re free, we’re just trapped in new wrong assumption – even worse than earlier.

Life is a journey.
Learn from others, but don’t have blind faith in them.
Don’t even fully trust your own feeling, for it sometimes tend to mislead you.

Sometimes you even made to believe that ‘this is my power, this is my dignity and all of this are mine’
It’s just a borrowed power since the true power is deep hidden inside yourself.
It’s so pure that sometimes easily covered with some arrogance and ‘feel good’ feelings.

Everyone have their fate and everyone deserve to decide their own fate.

Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SETAHUN,
tanyakan pada murid yang gagal naik kelas.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEBULAN,
tanyakan pada ibu yang melahirkan bayi prematur.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEMINGGU,
tanyakan pada editor majalah mingguan.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEJAM,
tanyakan pada kekasih yang menunggu untuk bertemu.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEMENIT,
tanyakan pada orang yang ketinggalan pesawat terbang.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEDETIK,
tanyakan pada orang yang baru saja terhindar dari kecelakaan.
Agar tahu pentingnya waktu SEMILIDETIK,
tanyakan pada peraih medali perak Olimpiade.

RENUNGANNYA …
“Hargailah setiap waktu yang anda miliki. Dan ingatlah waktu tidaklah menunggu siapa-siapa”
Diambil dari suatu tempat di dunia maya.

It’s much easier to comprehend english while listening than speaking. Speaking in english is a hell of disaster for me, since I often can’t find proper words to convey something I want to say.

My friend always tell me to learn by practice, but it’s really boring to practice english by yourself. It’s more interesting if you have a friend to practice english by conversation… but again.. I don’t have much of that sort of friends. sigh…

Where can I find someone with adequate english skill to practice with?
Any suggestion?

From what I see, the general story is about the hunger of power, and the journey to attain more power so they can protect their friend, family and everyone they loved.

It seems natural that way, but I always wonder – in reality not every wish of us will be fulfilled. Although we may strive hard to fulfill our mission, there’s no guarantee that we’ll always get what we want.

Even though I’m agree that we can’t give up on what we’re striving hard for. So, I guess this is good for motivating us.

Human tend to compete each other.
They’re competing at school, their work place, even in a match in virtually Playstation game.
When someone win, then the other must lose. The winner got all the pride, and the loser tend to hate themselves and also the one who beat them up.
If I say, both side are loser. The winner can’t win against arrogance inside themselves and the loser also can’t withstand with negative emotion that arise because of the defeat. That’s absolutely very absurd, though.

The true winner is the one who can control himself from being swallowed by arrogance. People who’re unable to win against themselves will never get the true meaning of victory.

Heh… to think about it, I always like this kind of weather, but one of my friend don’t like it. He said cloudy weather is like giving an impression that someone is sick.

Hm.. I think it’s just a matter of point of view.

To be honest, I hate sunny hot weather. But I always wonder why people in european country mostly like to take on vacation to tropical island? It’s hot in here you know !!!

Ha… maybe they are just bored with cold weather at their own country. It can be helped, of course.

In my country there’s a popular idiom : “neighbour’s grass is always greener than your own grass”. It means that we often feel that what we have is not as good as what the neighbour has. To sum it up, it also means that human will never satisfied with what they have, instead they’re always jealous with what other people had. What a pity, right?

We seemed to chase on a lot of things endlessly to the point that we forget to appreciate what we already had.

Greed is one of human problem. It consume your precious time without you knowing about it. It’s progressed to a degree that we actually don’t know what we want. We become confused, unsettled, lost in the middle of nowhere.

So, what would you gonna do if you come into this circumstances?

Honestly said, it once happened to me, and sometimes if I get lucky, I feel tired and easily forget anything. That’s the only time when I feel really relaxed. But most of time, I can’t let go of all my daily works, all my worries, and every stuffs in my head. It’s like your brain tied up to a strong iron chain that made you hard to let go all your problems.

I always said to myself that in order to free myself I need to rely on myself. Others can just give some help, but they will never be able to take the problems out of your head and finish it off at once. But sure, words is always easier to said than to be accomplished.

Argh… I think I gonna need good rest and meditate to calm my mind.

Ketika berusia 14 tahun, saya kehilangan seorang teman bermain yang meninggal karena sakit. Pada saat itu, saya hampir tak percaya dan sulit menerima kenyataan ini. Perasaan kehilangan dan takut menyelimuti saya. Saya sempat berpikir kenapa setiap orang harus mati? Kalaupun harus mati, kenapa mati di usia muda? Kenapa harus dilahirkan untuk mati? Kenapa kelahiran disambut dengan tawa dan bahagia sementara kematian disambut dengan tangisan? Hahhh… Banyak pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang timbul pada diri saya berkenaan dengan kematian teman saya. Inilah kilas balik yang akhirnya membuat saya berpikir tentang tujuan hidup. Dunia ini dalam satu menit telah terjadi begitu banyak kelahiran dan kematian. Kehidupan sungguh tidak pasti, namun kematian adalah pasti. Hidup bagaikan salju, panas matahari akan mencairkannya.

Dikutip dari Buku Nuansa Hidup karangan Bhikkhu Nyanakumuda