What We Are Before We Are Thinking About The Future

Where should I start writing about the future? The future I once knew, the future I thought I knew, the future I barely know. There are so many versions of the future. “You should start thinking about your future”, my mother told me. “I want you to be happy”, she added and she started to cry. My mother married at the age of twenty-one to the eldest son of nine siblings. He was the breadwinner of that house. She is the youngest of six. After the marriage, she moved to live with her husband and his eight siblings. I never asked her if she ever had time to wonder about herself: What is her dream? What does she like to do? What does she want to become? Did she ever know which version of the future she is going to live in before making that decision?

In my final year of high school, one of the tutors in an intensive course asked us, a room full of high schoolers’ final year, to write a list of ‘what we really want’ on a piece of paper in a short amount of time. This practice was to help us to choose our major, to start thinking about direction. When the tutor started the timer, I could not write anything. I thought about an art major, about a prestigious college, about the happiness I am going to receive, the compliment I am going to collect. I imagine the proud face of my parents. Or maybe I want something like a scholarship, a house, a car, or a title, or something metaphorical like a moon. I imagine transforming into a vase that holds water and flowers, or a chair that invites you to meet yourself. My mind went from one option to another. I wonder if that's what I want. I don’t know what I want.

My relationship with the question of ‘what we really want’ has been edgy ever since. I frequently have an imaginary battle inside my head, between something measurable and familiar versus everything the opposites. The latter doesn’t have a name or form. Its function is still vague: is it going to help me or destroy me? And why does it matter to know what we really want? Why do I have to choose? If the former is so familiar and save why I feel resentful towards it. If the latter is frightening, why am I longing for it as if it is my long lost friend? There is a fine line in between them. And as I gradually grow I realize how cunning the line is. Sometimes the line disguises itself as doubt, sometimes heartbreak, other times it transforms into the mountain at the bottom of your heart, dissolves everything you hold, and then vanishes into thin air. I don’t like the smell of destruction.

I was raised by my mother’s voice. Her voice is mine, her language is mine. I know her husband enough to register her pain as mine. I built a temple in my parent’s name. It was my future, the only vocabulary I had about living and becoming. My mother always reminded me about position: A woman should always be below a man, at the same tone when she cried for her husband and told me: This is my fate. One time she begged me to tell her about my burden at the same wavelength when she explained: At your age, I already have a kid and went to hajj. She perpetually reminded me about happiness: I want you to be happy. Do what you want with the same tone as when she said: A mother’s happiness is the child’s happiness. I’m so used to her contradiction, I eat it as if it is porridge: smooth and delicate even though it is always stuck in my throat.

What does it mean to be somebody's child and have a choice? What does it mean to be a daughter and have a voice?

I want to be Rilke’s student. I imagine sitting in front of Rilke and telling him about my mother. “Mr Rilke, my mother is sad because of me and I feel sad for her.” I say. And Rilke will advise me something philosophical like, “Be patient with everything unresolved in your heart.” or “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” the same way he told Mr Kappus, the same way he wrote his poem. And I’m going to tell him, “I don’t know what you mean Mr Rilke but I feel way much better.” Isn’t that how wisdom works? It touches the soul the way the mind can’t comprehend. And please don’t tell me that is an obsession. It is just an imagination. That conversation. It is a projecting reality of what I am longing for. I am longing for a conversation. I am longing for guidance. I am longing for the presence of grown-ups.

In the second year of college, I met a teacher who scolds us at almost every beginning of his class. He randomly picked two or three of the attendees and threw questions. He taught general courses named ‘Arsitektur Nusantara’. It was the most favourite class in our major. His class was always full despite his scolding. After weeks of his class, I asked him questions through email. I love asking questions through email, it’s the safest distance. And yet he managed to scold me: Read before you ask. Read before you ask. I was lazy, I hate reading. I want a shortcut. It was during one of his elective classes (I attended all of his classes) and almost in my final year of college when he drew a graph —an x-y axis about self-discovery and how we place ourselves in a community. He is the first grown-up who told me to choose myself. And not long after that, he fell ill and eventually passed away.

People mourn something they’ve lost, something they can’t hold. My mother mourns for my future, she can’t hold me like she used to. I mourn for the absence of my teacher —I mourn for the absence of a grown-up who taught me what is the right thing to do. I mourn for the little girl inside me I’ve abandoned for years. I mourn for the loss of time I could not choose her. And by losing comes the desire to protect, to hold, to measure the impermanence, to plan the uncertainty.

I want to live inside Rilke’s letter. I want to preserve every memory of my late teacher’s teaching. I guess as I grow older I miss his scolding. I want to re-collect every remaining piece of myself and put a talisman in each piece so she won’t be lost again.

All day I watch my mother praying for my future, for my happiness. It is her ritual of holding. During Eid, my mother said she prayed for us: a good husband for me and a good job for my brother. I wonder what we are before we are thinking about the future. I lost myself for so many years so I can get a good grade so I can live in what my parents believe as a better future. And the price for that version of the future is too high. My dream is not even mine. It was always someone else’s. I know at the back of my head my mother makes the best out of what she can do with all the resources she can get. And because I was privileged enough to enjoy the time and space living in the kingdom she was built, I can throw questions whenever I want. I was enjoying the privilege of self-discovery, recognizing the pain, asking questions, making a decision for myself, and choosing my future.

Yes, the temple is fractured. And I can not find any glue which fits to rebuild. I need to unlearn the brick and look for another material. Maybe a thread, maybe a wind, maybe Rilke’s letters. I don’t know. I still figure it out. The vase is a space. The chair is a space. The space is a vessel on its own even if the material is intangible. And what grows inside the vessel will always unseen, unsayable, unmeasurable. The porridge has moulded into stones. I throw a stone back to my mother. She keeps making porridge.

At this time around I barely know how my future is going to unfold. And as far as I remember, the future is always far from arriving. It belongs to the distance.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep coming to my mother as a vessel for her sorrow. Meanwhile, I keep telling myself I am a vessel on my own.

Ifada

June 2021