The Matrix

"The oracle, she told me I'm..."
"She told you exactly what you needed to hear, that's all. Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize, just as I did, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

Neo and Morpheus from "The Matrix"

The Last Frontier

“General! What have you done?! Why did you let the enemies know our weaknesses?!” Lieutenant Lee angrily debated the General during the morning briefing before they’re going to war. “We need a new approach and reexamine our strategy, Lieutenant Lee,” the General replied calmly. It was very unusual for General Wang to behave so soft and polite since he is known as an iron fist and very temperamental. “But, general, we’ve been great! We’ve been knocking down new territories, we’ve been admired, and we’ve been feared! Look what you have done to the troops! They are loosing confidence!” said Lieutenant Lee again. His face reddens. He couldn’t sit still.

There has been some awkward moment lately during the morning briefings. Especially these past few weeks, the General seemed to have lost his mind. He looked as if he is having a mid life crisis, or probably because it has been too long for him to live in the middle of war far away from home. There was one last kingdom to be conquered by General Wang to build his great kingdom, the Wang Kingdom. Last month the general visited the enemy’s head quarter and requested to speak to the emperor himself. Emperor Chin.

Instead sending a threat letter and a dead-bloody-cow-head, he was sending gifts, beautiful stones, silver and gold, asking permission to see Emperor Chin. Emperor Chin, a great warrior himself, accepted the invitation.

They talk for hours over tea in the courtyard surrounded by beautiful garden and soft music in the background. They seemed to have known each other very well. May be it was because they share the same problems or may be even the same dreams. “You know, you are the last kingdom for me to conquer before I could have a one-world-one-country, completing my dream,” says General Wang. “However, lately, I have questioned my purpose,” the General says softly. “To me, it seems there’s something else greater that I still need to fulfill but I don’t know what.”

“General Wang,” says Emperor Chin. “You are a great warrior. You have proven yourself to the limit. No one have doubt your ability to win a war. Even I, myself, would have surrendered to you to avoid mass casualties,” says Emperor again. “Emperor Chin, you are too kind. But you only know what you have heard. You don’t know the real me. I am weak. I can only give order to my troops to fight and fight. But inside, I am trembling,” says the general.

Surprised with the sincere statement by the general, Emperor Chin didn’t have any clue what to say. A great warrior feared by all was literally crying in front him begging for mercy. The conversation ended with silence.

Month after month, year after year, the Chin Kingdom was waiting in fear from the General Wang’s aggression, but the attack didn’t realize until today. It was a decision made by General Wang to keep the world divided by two countries instead of one country like he has been dreaming of. It’s been thousands of years after the conversation between the two great warriors. The story has become legend. Some still wonder what make the General to unrealized his dream when it was only one step away. Some believe that he had gone crazy. Some believe that he was just afraid of the Emperor Chin’s war skills. Some believe it was only the general's way to keep his dream alive.

Crawling

I couldn’t see.
Not because I was in the dark,
But it was too bright

I couldn’t hear.
Not because I couldn’t hear any sound,
But it was too loud

I was thirsty.
Not because I didn’t have any drink,
But it was saltwater and sugar

I was hiding.
Not hiding from the crowds,
But hiding from myself

Groovy kind of love

“Groovy Kind Of Love” by Phil Collins played on the radio. I’ve heard the song so many times, but this morning it seemed as if I heard it the first time. May be it is true what they say. When you’re in Love, everything seems so sweet. I think I’m falling in Love again. I do. Thank You for giving me another chance. Don’t leave me hanging, alone in the dark again. I want to be with You forever.

Fate and Equilibrium

Everything in this world is predetermined. Everything is predictable. But yet, since human intelligence is limited, we cannot make sure of what is going to happen the next day or next week. We can only assume.

Life is all about equilibrium. Action is equal to reaction. With this rule everything is predictable. Computers have inputs and outputs. We can predict the outputs of the computer program when we know all the inputs. It's the same with human being. We can predict what will John do today if we know what is the input he has got all over his life: how he was raised, what food he ate, what newspaper he read, people he talk to, the weather, the car accident, the heart break. Some of these inputs may become habits. Habit is one of the outputs. Habit can later become input and personality is the output.

To control the output, a personality or a person-of-who-we-become, we can control the input. There are some variables that already given to us as human living on this planet. One of them: we are living on a 24-hour day. This is a fixed variable, called time. Everyone is given this same fixed variable. However, the magnitude from using this variable is magnificently different from person to person. One second could mean a new world record for runners, one minute could mean life and death for doctors in operating room, while three hours could mean nothing for couch potatoes.

I believe that it is true that life is predetermined. Some people call it fate. However fate is not like a single dimension line that predetermined and fixed. I believe fate is multidimensional lines that has branches. Which branch we chose depends on ourselves. We have the ability to choose (i.e. choosing the inputs). Each branch has its own consequences. It’s all laid out (fixed) for us. The trick is finding out which branch can give the best consequences. Not just short-term consequences, but long-term.

Some branch may offer a better outcome but it’s not going to be optimum in the long term. Mathematicians call it local optimum. Our goal in life is finding the global optimum (the ultimate output). It is not easy. But that is the beauty of it. We sometime have to go down hill to get to the highest peak. We sometime have to go backward to go up front. We sometime have to get hurt to be happy. That’s life. It is predetermined. It’s always in equilibrium.

There’s an old saying: you always have to pay the price (hard work) to own something (happiness).

Pausing for a moment

It’s been eight long years I’ve been out, pursuing a dream 10,000 miles away from home. Eight years ago, my youngest sister, with her curly hair and pony tailed, was still wearing her white-and-dark blue junior school uniform. She couldn’t drive a car yet. My second-younger-sister was still in her senior high school. I still remember the way she comb her long wavy dark hair, giggling with her school friends who often visit our house. Those days seemed just yesterday. I can still remember vividly how we spent our weekends at the mall for windows shopping and having brown rice in front of Masjid Istiqomah. I missed those days, where life seemed so easy and beautiful.

Today is different. They are all grown up. My second sister is married to a guy that used to live in our neighborhood in central java 25 years ago. The youngest sister is still studying; she is in her senior year at one of Bandung’s private university. She really can drive now. Sometimes I regret that I was not the one who taught her how to drive since I was the one who taught her how to ride a bike.

Today, life seems so urgent, real, and provocative. There’s some level of urgency to find the meaning of life, to find the person whom I suppose to be. My dream is still the same even though it has evolved in someway giving priorities and importance adding spices to my life.

Most of my high school friends are married, having children and having a promising career. They seemed to already have found the purpose of life: the person whom they suppose to be. Their attitude may still the same when a bunch of us meet again at a coffee shop at the mall the other day. Some are still talkative and joke with their usual dry humor. However, behind their high school attitudes, clearly they are all progressed in a lot of ways. I feel proud for them. I’m really glad that I still have them as my good ol’ friends.

To me, tomorrow may still seem uncertain. But hey, that’s life all about right! That’s the art of living. We all know that the direction is nothing but up, but the trick is figuring out if we are climbing the ladder that leans on the right wall. I think it is time for me to pause for a moment and analyze if I am leaning on the right wall.

It’s been eight years. Everybody seems to have racing ahead of me. I somehow feel blinded with their dusts, but yet I’m pausing for a moment.

Yes, pausing. For a moment.