...just to go back again someday.
“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.” - Harun Yahya
I showed my father the quote above about seven years ago then told him that the quote has really motivated me. I wanted not to be like those birds, I wanted to go away, experience and learn lots of things and this and that and everything. My dad smiled and said that maybe it wasn't supposed to be understood that way, maybe the quote wanted to tell us that you should stay. The birds were just some anecdote to tell us that nature wants us to stay. I didn't understand, or maybe I didn't want to. My wings were too big, they wanted to spread.
"Rantau" is one of the old words in Bahasa Indonesia that I can't find in other languages and thus explains not only the activity that almost only the Indonesians do, but also the Indonesian culture itself. This word means leaving your home with the purpose to have a better life or to make one's way in life. The activity of "rantau" or in the verb-form "merantau" is somehow always related with a better place than one had before. The meaning of the word "better" itself, at least in the last few decades, is always related with good incomes, big houses, degrees, respect and honor from a bigger group of people.
I left Indonesia 2,5 years ago with the same motivation mentioned above - like almost every other Indonesians living here in Germany. Then this happened; my routine keeps me busy and I become comfortable with the life on the surface.
At about the same time 2,5 years ago, a very good friend of mine married a man whom she finally started a new life with, they moved to a very small city in Middle Java. She left the career she has built and the very good money she got from it for a moderate life in a small city where you can hardly get signal to get Google, with a husband who doesn't earn as much money as she did. She basically did exactly the opposite of "rantau". We are not as close as we were, but we still get in touch once in a while. In our latest phone call she told me that her life is beautiful and that she could not imagine doing anything better. Her life has become simpler and happier. It is not gold and money but it is the thing gold and money try to reach; contentment. Apparently, she said to me, to reach the contentment-phase, you have to skip the gold-and-money-phase. Then she laughed.
At least in the old books wrote in javanese kingdom hundreds of years ago, an old javanese philosopher portrayed how the society should live; in the harmony. Harmony itself, he later described, is built of togetherness. This had really existed, people lived in a harmony that unconsciously became rooted, until one generation broke the chain, ruined the harmony, digging the unconsciousness just to redefine the harmony. Anyone in this generation will someday come to the same definition, the same conclusion, but they'd do it anyway maybe simply because that's a humane tendency.
I just think that it is sometimes funny that people just travel far to realize that the things they need are the modest things they left behind. What's wrong with just living the life with the norms it already serves us? That may not seem so sophisticated but maybe that's what you're looking for?
"Just exist for a moment, that's heroic enough." - John D. Boswell
I showed my father the quote above about seven years ago then told him that the quote has really motivated me. I wanted not to be like those birds, I wanted to go away, experience and learn lots of things and this and that and everything. My dad smiled and said that maybe it wasn't supposed to be understood that way, maybe the quote wanted to tell us that you should stay. The birds were just some anecdote to tell us that nature wants us to stay. I didn't understand, or maybe I didn't want to. My wings were too big, they wanted to spread.
"Rantau" is one of the old words in Bahasa Indonesia that I can't find in other languages and thus explains not only the activity that almost only the Indonesians do, but also the Indonesian culture itself. This word means leaving your home with the purpose to have a better life or to make one's way in life. The activity of "rantau" or in the verb-form "merantau" is somehow always related with a better place than one had before. The meaning of the word "better" itself, at least in the last few decades, is always related with good incomes, big houses, degrees, respect and honor from a bigger group of people.
I left Indonesia 2,5 years ago with the same motivation mentioned above - like almost every other Indonesians living here in Germany. Then this happened; my routine keeps me busy and I become comfortable with the life on the surface.
At about the same time 2,5 years ago, a very good friend of mine married a man whom she finally started a new life with, they moved to a very small city in Middle Java. She left the career she has built and the very good money she got from it for a moderate life in a small city where you can hardly get signal to get Google, with a husband who doesn't earn as much money as she did. She basically did exactly the opposite of "rantau". We are not as close as we were, but we still get in touch once in a while. In our latest phone call she told me that her life is beautiful and that she could not imagine doing anything better. Her life has become simpler and happier. It is not gold and money but it is the thing gold and money try to reach; contentment. Apparently, she said to me, to reach the contentment-phase, you have to skip the gold-and-money-phase. Then she laughed.
At least in the old books wrote in javanese kingdom hundreds of years ago, an old javanese philosopher portrayed how the society should live; in the harmony. Harmony itself, he later described, is built of togetherness. This had really existed, people lived in a harmony that unconsciously became rooted, until one generation broke the chain, ruined the harmony, digging the unconsciousness just to redefine the harmony. Anyone in this generation will someday come to the same definition, the same conclusion, but they'd do it anyway maybe simply because that's a humane tendency.
I just think that it is sometimes funny that people just travel far to realize that the things they need are the modest things they left behind. What's wrong with just living the life with the norms it already serves us? That may not seem so sophisticated but maybe that's what you're looking for?
"Just exist for a moment, that's heroic enough." - John D. Boswell
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