Be the light
There are periods in my life in which I lived a semi-nomadic life. Those periods came after I left my parents’ house in my hometown almost nine years ago to stand on my own feet.
Between 2011 and 2014, I’ve lived in no less than five different cities spread across different countries and different islands. The period between 2012 and 2013 when I studied abroad, I was so used to knowing someone just to attend their farewell party not so long after. I held one myself before returning to Indonesia after completing my studies — a paradoxical one: a bar hopping drinking party to celebrate quitting drinking as I was about to leave a secular country back to a… ehm… religious one.
I had this semi-nomadic life again in 2018 and the entire 2019 when I traveled back and forth between long stretches of business trips. This period blurred my definition of ‘home’:
Is ‘home’ this apartment room on the 8th floor of a high rise building in Greater Jakarta? I call this ‘home’ because after a long day at work, I want nothing but to slip underneath my blanket in this apartment. But I don’t really belong here, do I?
Or is home the physical house I have lived for years in my base town? It’s mine but I don’t feel like calling it home for now. It’s too far away to seek comfort from… after fighting with various work entities to seek some degree of compromise because of my job.
Or my parents’ house in the home town which I always refer to as ‘home’ whenever I am in my base town?
A simple question such as: “where do you live?” became complicated. “I live here but I don’t” was always in my mind as I answered that question. Hello-goodbyes were once again my norm. Every time I bid someone goodbye, it was easier to assume that I would never meet them again. And that… was mostly true.
Today, I opened a friend’s Facebook page, an Indonesian working for UNESCO in Paris. France is still applying strict countrywide movement restrictions to combat the spread of Covid-19 as I wrote this; I wanted to wish her well during le confinement — the lockdown. Upon opening, I noticed the sentence she chose to put as a statement on her profile underneath her name:
I feel attacked. I’ve adopted this hello-goodbye mindset as a result of being nomadic. Have I been a light in every person I’ve crossed paths with, however briefly? Or have I managed to be a black hole that sapped their hopes and dreams causing misery regardless of the short time window?
People coming and going is inevitable; hello-goodbyes will continue to be a part of our lives, or at least, mine — the only one I really experience. But with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the horrible 2020 we’ve had so far, it has never been so apparent that we never know what’s coming. We never know what’s lurking just around the corner waiting to change our lives forever, waiting to disrupt our complacency towards normalcy. We never know — especially with no end of this pandemic in sight — in what brutal ways we will have people coming and going out of our lives. Therefore, the words put by my friend really resonates to me: choose to be the light for those whose paths you come across with no matter how briefly — it might be the first and last impression they will associate you with.
And it turns out I’ve written something alike, to whom the true intended recipient might never have read.
So, have I been the light for you?
