Month: April 2017

Minggu lalu aku baru aja selesai baca sebuah buku yang menarik banget. Judulnya The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Intinya buku tersebut mau mengajarkan kita untuk ngga ambil pusing mengenai terlalu banyak hal. We should pay attention to several matters in life, but not everything. Yang pertama tentu karena we only have this much of attention span, and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week untuk bisa memikirkan semua hal dalam hidup. Kedua, karena ada hal-hal yang di luar kendali kita and we can only do so little about it. Ketiga, karena as I’ve written about this in another post, society is way too noisy. Dan hidup setiap orang ngga bisa di-sama-samain. We all are unique.

Nah alasan keempatnya nih, which is the last chapter of the book, yang aku suka banget. And it’s a very good reminder for us all. Alasan tersebut adalah cause we will end up dying.

We ain’t gonna live forever. Pada akhirnya ada satu waktu di mana kita harus meninggalkan kehidupan kita di dunia. We’re gonna die anyway, jadi buat apa terlalu mikirin hal-hal yang kurang penting, things that do not matter so much in our life. So we gotta pick very carefully and very wisely, hal-hal apa saja yang mau kita pedulikan dalam hidup ini.

Since we’re going to die, one day, hal-hal tersebut harus merupakan sesuatu yang meaningful. Many people try to leave traces in this world. Ada yang nulis buku, menciptakan sesuatu, dan lain-lain supaya ketika mereka meninggal, mereka ngga benar-benar hilang dari muka bumi. And if you believe in the life after death just like me, kita tentu juga harus make sure bahwa hal yang kita pedulikan tersebut bisa membawa kita ke kehidupan yang lebih baik setelah meninggal nanti.

Some said ignorance is a bliss. Yes, true, only if we choose the right things to ignore. As compensation, we also have the right things to care about (or like the book said, to give a f*ck about). Sooo, dengan memilah-milah mana yang penting dan mana yang engga, beban hidup jadi lebih ringan and we will end up being happier. Who wouldn’t want that?

♥ Atiqah Zulfa Nadia

When I was a kid, I joined a painting class. Every time I came to the class, I had to produce one painting. Pretty often I was not so happy with my painting. Either I hate the color or simply that I don’t like the picture. Yet my teacher always told me this “one day, this painting will look good. It depends on your mood, on the ambience, on the surroundings, etc. just keep it. And you’ll see that this is a great painting.”

That’s true about art. Kalau di film Monalisa Smile, Julia Roberts sempat bertanya ke murid-muridnya. Apa itu seni? Siapa yang menilai suatu karya itu seni atau bukan, dan sebagainya. Funny enough bahwa suatu karya sederhana bisa bernilai seni tinggi kalau yang membuat adalah pelukis terkenal. The exact same painting mungkin ngga akan berharga tinggi kalau cuma orang-orang seperti aku yang melukis.

But no. That’s not my point. Poinku adalah bahwa semua indah pada waktunya.

I’m now starting to believe in timing. As a human, which has so many limitation, timing is important. Ever heard the sayings “you can have everything you want. But not in the same time”? That’s, in my opinion, exactly how it is. If we have everything, all at once, we’re going to be overwhelmed. So timing is crucial.

And we gotta trust the perfect timing for every single event in our life that has been decided by The Almighty.

Semua udah ada yang ngatur dan kalau dipikir-pikir kadang kita terlalu tergesa-gesa kalau menginginkan sesuatu. Jadi ada baiknya memang percaya sama Yang Maha Tahu. Jadi aku pun akhirnya belajar untuk ngga lupa meminta sesuatu dengan keterangan ‘di waktu yang tepat’ dan berdoa supaya selalu sabar dan bersyukur supaya penantiannya menjadi penantian yang indah dan baik.

Semua pasti akan indah pada waktunya. Meskipun, waktu yang tepat terkadang ngga datang tepat waktu.
❤️ Atiqah Zulfa Nadia

Scrolled down through my Instagram feeds, I found a very interesting picture. It quotes a conversation from Paulo Coelho’s The Zahir. Ester asked why people are sad. “That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”

I have been thinking about this since quite a long time ago. It begins when one of my friend complained about how Indonesians are forced to get a job right after graduating from university. Who force them? Their parents, their family, their lecturer well, basically the society. Meanwhile, in some other countries, people can take their gap year after university. The gap year can be used for traveling, doing an internship, working part-time, learning new language, etc. People are allowed to choose their path (and actually be responsible about it).

Graduates in here are expected to work in the field that is related to their major. Furthermore, they are expected to be paid with a good amount of money. Truth is, it is not so easy to look for a job nowadays. People competes with thousands of other people. So it creates a high pressure for graduates.

In fact, maybe getting a job and having a promising career are not the goals of all graduates. Maybe they want to dance, work freelance, be an entrepreneur, or anything else. But that’s not what society accepts (at least not yet).

I think this kind of thing also happens in other matters. For example, getting married. Currently, people, especially woman, are expected to get married at a certain age. Or buying a house. Or getting into college and choosing the prestigious major. It seems like the society has a particular path that everybody has to follow. Thus we kind of make our plan according to that path. Thus the target of a person’s life becomes similar to each other: after high school, entering a good university, graduating with high GPA, start working in a well-known company, getting married, buying a house, pursuing a master degree, and so on and so on.

Even without realizing it, we do a society check when we make plans in our life. Would this be what the society can accept? Is everybody doing this thing? Will I look normal if I make this particular move? Etc.

I do, too.

Well I don’t actually know whether this is right or wrong. But I do believe that we gotta do what makes us happy. And we gotta shut down those people who try to break us. On the other hand, we live in a society and we have to ‘comply’ with the ‘rule’…. or not(?)

Well, whatever it is, I hope we always follow the path that is kind and makes us happy.

♥ Atiqah Zulfa Nadia