So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. [The Hunger Games, Book 1, Chapter 1, Paragraph 11]

…and what they’d do to protect their kids.

as long as you're safe...

I know she’ll catch me whenever I fall. But she can’t protect me from the choices I make.

It doesn’t matter, mom, I still love you.

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

Really? I'm sure I can help you with that...

A part of Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford went like this:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

I could say that I’ve cheated Death once. I came so close to Death that it would’ve changed my entire perspective on Life. Unfortunately, I was still too young to understand. Maybe I’m still too young now to understand it all.

But Death is still there, whether we understand it or not. We can’t foresee it, but we can be sure that each second that passes brings us ever closer to it. Just thinking about this can have a profound effect on you.

What have  I done?

What do I want to achieve? Have I achieved it?

How do I want to be remembered?

In the past 27-odd years, have I contributed anything for the good of my family/church/friends/community/workplace?

How much time do I have until my fragile body succumbs to the various damages I have done to it throughout my life?

Have I taken good care of my body?

Have I learned anything from all the mistakes I made?

Have I changed to be better?

Have I been kind?

These questions, and a lot more, came storming and conquered my puny mind. I do hope that I can answer those questions honestly, and do something to change my answers if I don’t like it.

I’ve cheated Death once. I don’t think Death likes to be cheated twice, nor will I be able to cheat it again.

Here’s to Death, the single best invention of Life!

Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes you just want to kill yourself and get it over with. Sometimes those who you trust most, those who you hold dear to your heart, turn out to be the ones who betray you. And because they are the ones who make your life seem worthwhile, the cut feels deeper than it actually is.

There maybe people who can calm you down, remind you that everything is not lost. They’re only humans. They are not perfect. But there is one perfect solution.

This is one of the ways it is sung:

It is the prayer of St. Francis.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me bring your love,
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord,
And where there’s doubt true faith in you.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope,
Where there is darkness, only light,
And where there’s sadness, ever joy.

O Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love with all my soul!

Make me a channel of your peace:
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
In giving of ourselves that we receive,
And in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Humans can’t save you. You can’t even save yourself. But He in who we trust, He will take care of you.

Humans sleep. They eat, they go to work, they ignore, they lie. They do all kinds of bad stuff. But He will always, always be available.

I hope you‘ll find your peace soon.

I seldom post a song, let alone a video clip. But this song has been in my head since I don’t know when, and I love this arrangement with all the strings and everything…

Nobody wants to be alone
The heart beats happy when it has a place
And if it doesn’t have a home
It can come into my space

So you can be the one I love
I can be the one you long for
You can be the one I want… want
And you can be the one I love
This could be our world wide open
You can be the one I want… want

When you’ve fallen for someone
But that someone doesn’t feel the same
But before you come undone
You can call out my name

So you can be the one I love
I can be the one you long for
You can be the one I want… want
And you can be the one I love
This could be our world wide open
You can be the one I want… want

So you can be the one… one one one
I can be the one… one one one
So you can be the one… one one one
I can be the one… one one one

So you can be the one I love
I can be the one you long for
You can be the one I want… want
And you can be the one I love
This could be our world wide open
You can be the one I want… want

I miss my headphones…

I realize that just a few months ago I posted about how I should be thankful, how no one was able to be a perfect friend, and that my friends are good enough for me. Well, I just had this thought…

This is not a gripe. Just a thought.

What if… I didn’t have all the things I have right now? What if I didn’t have a 32-inch LED TV? What if I didn’t have a motorbike? What if I didn’t have a MacBook? Or a sound system set? A gym membership?

What if I didn’t know a thing about programming? What if I was stupid? What if I had no arms or no legs or no limbs at all? What if I had that nasty tumor attack me once more and I bleed to an almost certain death?

Nah, it’s getting too extreme… Let’s take a few steps back…

What if I was just… me? Plain-old-me. Vanilla me. No possessions. No wealth. No skills.

Just. Me.

Would you still be my friend? Would you still want to be a friend to me?

Would you ask if I wanted to go to the beach? Would you text me or buzz me just to see if I’m OK? Would you care if I hadn’t eaten lunch? Would you tell me how your mom scolded your sister because she went out with the wrong boy? Would you share a bowl of fruits with me because both of us couldn’t afford a full meal? Would you ask me to meet up just so we could talk about anything and everything until both of us couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore?

Would you?

Nuff said.

This morning, as usual, I picked up a friend and whisked us to the office on my dear motorcycle. I wasn’t racing, but I wasn’t a snail either. We got through traffic just fine and arrived at the final U-turn, about 300 meters away from our final destination. I pressed on the brakes and we slowed down to an almost complete stop. I saw that the oncoming traffic was still about half a kilometer away and I decided I could make the turn. So I did.

But I was wrong.

Some guy on an old rusty motorcycle yelled at me for making a near-miss. My heart must’ve skipped a beat, because I was still trembling when we got off the bike at the office’s parking lot a few minutes later.

Then I stopped for a moment and thought about how I got into that situation. I was making a U-turn, and… where the heck did that old man come from? He was on the other side of the bypass divider, facing the oncoming traffic. And he yelled at me? What the &u©k? How dare he yell at me when I was the victim?

But see, that’s traffic in Indonesia. You’ve got to get used to it. You must adjust yourself and be vigilant at all times, because who the heck knows what the guy in front of you will do in a split-second. He might swerve left, or right, stop smack dab in the middle of the road; heck, he might as well make a U-turn in the middle of a busy highway without so much as activating his turn signal or look at the rear-view mirror. Yes, everything’s possible.

As for my passenger? Not a word she said, even until we got to our cubicles. In fact, not a word she said since she got on the bike behind me. So I guess I’m the weird guy here, because she’s obviously oblivious.

So I was just thinking about the past few weeks. Dissatisfaction had become the central theme of a lot of major conversations surrounding me. A lot of people are complaining about this and that and whatnot, and mostly it’s because they don’t get paid enough. It’s the “What’s In It For Me?” factor.

Well, let’s just list all the reasons I should be thankful. I’ll start with the things that money can’t buy:

1. I have a wonderful, caring, loving family. Both my parents are alive and well, and they still work. My sister is starting a small business with her friends. We can still go to church together whenever I go home to Yogyakarta.
2. My extended family is also fun to be with and most of them are in good shape (physically, financially, whatever).
3. I have a lot of friends ranging from people I met in elementary school to work colleagues who have become some of my best friends. Good friends are hard to come by, and not any one person is capable of being the perfect friend, but my friends are good enough for me.
4. My English is good, I believe in my logic, and I can play several musical instruments. All this I owe to God.
5. I get to work on something that I love: programming. Work and office life is not always fun, but for the most part, it’s quite enjoyable.

Next, for the “mathematicians” among the readers, here are the things money and statistics can measure:

1. I had retinoblastoma. Retinoblastoma occurs on 1 of every 18,000 – 30,000 live births worldwide, and currently more than 90% of infants having retinoblastoma survive. Ten minutes of googling and five minutes of math would tell you that in 1984 there are between 300 to 500 infant deaths worldwide due to retinoblastoma. I survived, and I believe I wasn’t just part of a set of statistics. My survival is a miracle.
2. I can read and write. This might seem like a very trivial thing, but about 16.8 million Indonesians are still illiterate.
3. I have a Bachelor’s Degree, majoring in Electrical Engineering. Primary school net attendance ratio in Indonesia is above 85%, which means more than 85% of children aged 6-12 years (primary school age) actually attend primary school. Secondary school net attendance ratio drops to about 57%, and as you can imagine higher education NAR drops to well below that (no actual figure available yet).
4. I have a job, and the longest period I have been unemployed is less than a month. No matter how stressed I am at work, I will be more stressed if I am unemployed. As of 2010, the estimated unemployment rate in Indonesia is 7.2% of the workforce, which amounts to around 8.4 million people.
5. I have an income level that allows me to live comfortably, support my parents if only a bit, and aid others who are in need. I’m certain that my income level enables me to live well above the $1.25 PPP (purchasing power parity), and even well above $2.00 PPP. In Indonesia, as of 2010, 50.6% of the population (118.4 million) live with $2.00 PPP, and 18.7% of the population (43.7 million) have to make do with a $1.25 PPP.
6. I can afford a nice boarding house and have three meals a day. Some say that there are more than 3 million homeless people in Indonesia alone. They probably sleep under bridges or on the streets, live on one or two meals per day, have no appropriate clothing to protect them from the heat of the sun or the pouring rain, and have to worry every day about getting scooped up by the local police.
7. I have a company-sponsored health insurance policy. Last time I used it, I had a bad case of bacteria infection in my stomach and it would’ve cost me $40 if I didn’t have that covered.
8. I get to fly home at least twice a year. The company covers the tickets, and even gives me a little bit more than necessary so that I can treat my family and friends to a really nice dinner every time I get home.
9. I have a motorcycle. As of 2009, there are “only” 70.7 million motorized vehicles in Indonesia, more than 52 million of those being motorcycles. Keeping in mind that Indonesia’s public transportation system is not desirable, I consider owning my own motorcycle a privilege. And yes, I paid for it myself (settled the entire loan in under a year, at that), another privilege if I may say so.
10. I have a cellphone. About 35% of Indonesia’s population (81.9 million people) can’t afford to have a mobile cellular telephone subscription.
11. I have an internet connection. Two, in fact. As of July 2011, internet penetration in Indonesia is only 21%, which means more than 63 million people aged 15 – 65 in Indonesia have no internet access.
12. I can spend less then I earn, and thus have quite a bit of money left at the end of the month to transfer to my savings account. A lot people have trouble with their shopping habits and a lot more have trouble just making their ends meet.

There you go. This list could go on with all the luxuries that I can afford for myself. I’m not the richest guy in the world, but there are a lot more people who don’t have what I have now. To put things in perspective, here’s a list of some people that I met during my last visit to Yogyakarta that are thankful for what they have:

1. A geek friend who is struggling to keep his computer store open while paying the operating costs of it and dealing with the gambler landlord and pesky police officers. Thank God, all I have to do is what my boss tells me to do, and I get paid. I don’t have to worry about me going out of business (at least, for now), getting an eviction notice, or being in jail.
2. A friend in adventures who works graveyard shifts while working on her thesis because she’s been paying her own tuition fees since her first year in college. Thank God, all I had to do was text my mom and she’d give me money to pay my tuition, all the way until graduation.
3. A friend in gaming who dropped out of college and is now struggling to stay on top of things by learning to be a property reseller. If the business slows down, he would have to go for months on end on practically nothing. Thank God, I never have to worry about next month’s salary.

Alright, so this post is starting to get too long to read. With all the reasons to be thankful I mentioned above (and many more I couldn’t write down), if I’m still complaining, I should be ashamed of myself.

So, dear God, teach me not to focus on what I have not, but on what I can share with others. Teach me to focus on my privileges rather than my limitations. Teach me to appreciate the littlest of things that other people may not be able to experience.

Satisfaction guaranteed.