An Introduction from a Pocket Size

Last night —or today at 3 a.m, I picked up brother at the train station. Our house is near a traditional market. At that time we came across, the market was very crowded. With people and vegetables. Butchers sliced dead cows, laid it on the ground, with its blood gathered on the roadside. Eggs, papayas, carrots, spinach, all mixed with the merchants’ hat, the buyer’s short, or some coolie’s flip-flop. Someone brought a plastic full of catfish, put it on his motorcycle. An old lady wore a purple jacket, talked harshly to some man —maybe about numbers. The whole situations looked messy. The road was narrowed as too many people filling and shifting, moving here and there. The world was still dark, the street lamp was still on, and on the contrary: here I sat on my very comfortable seat, was going to pick up my overly dearly brother, in which we would gush and chat about our favourite tv shows. Oh, Daredevil Season 3 is at best! And at that very moment, I forgot about all that, all those visual messiness as I was overwhelmed about the excitement of meeting my brother.

Sometimes along the way of living, I am questioning about my ability of compassion to other people. Especially when it comes to hardship. Oftentimes I measure worthiness by one variable: Hardship. By experiencing hardship, humans are able to connect with kindness and compassion, that somehow what gives a sense of meaning and purpose into our lives. Hardship by definition means suffers: experiencing not just a physical exhaustion but also a mental distress. In Buddhism, suffering is used as a term to define discomfort, difficult, unpleasant experiences, and pain. Sharon Salzberg, a meditation teacher wrote in her article On Suffering and the End of Suffering that, "Suffering in his teaching does not necessarily mean grave physical pain, but rather the mental suffering we undergo when our tendency to hold pleasure encounters the fleeting nature of life, and our experiences become unsatisfying and ungovernable". It fascinated me. Hardship and suffering that I know a long time ago was something completely different. My perceptions toward those were shifting three years ago since I have time completely with myself. Our culture has a tendency to determine our self-worth by only physical things, a university degree, jobs, appearance, marriage. So when somebody does not fit into that frame, they one-sidedly, powerfully, silently, diminish them. The hardship become physical, and when it comes to a mental distress, everybody suddenly shuts down. It's shameful.

I believe that all the people I met indirectly at the market must have so much passion for choosing to live on the opposite side of a normal timeline. The timeline which, at 3 a.m in the morning we normally be in bed, snuggling with pillows or a breathing-meat. Maybe in between them, there is a mother whose child sleep at home needs to be warm. Or father whose family waiting at home, hoping he'll be fine. Or just nobody with no one who fights for a plate of rice and a wider chance of survival. 

I am no good at compassion, nor accepting contradictions. I filled up my cup with judgement, blame, and cynicism as I lost confidence in humanity. I draw a line and name it: Ignorance. When blood-related-somebody throws fire under my nose, I'll pray for their misfortune which I directly ask God for it. That's the time when I continually back to poetry (and art), a place where I can make sense for what I can't understand. Last month, I painted blue (and played a whole of melancholic songs) as I feel the need to grief. Yesterday I told somebody on Instagram that it is okay to feel lost and disconnected because I am too. That's for me the deepest hardship and the truest suffering: lost and disconnected. That's the only way I can place my self in the landscape. Not by offering words, or painting (or even a hateful prayer), but by being fully present for all the messiness I hold inside. And for here and now, I offer my self, and the void, and the bird chirping outside, and strangers, uncles, and aunties, and crushes, a poem from Naomi Shihab Nye, Kindness:

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

...

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

In the meantime you read this, I already back for my brother and our favourite tv shows. Or else back for my bed, dreaming about Matt Murdock.

November 2018.
ifd.