Categories
Features Lifestyle

Live and Chill : “You just forget”

(“Semua yang sirna ‘kan nanti terganti / Semua yang sirna ‘kan kembali lagi”) Those lyrics are from Hindia’s song outro “Secukupnya.” It means that “what has gone away will return, and what has gone away will be replaced” in English. Those lyrics have a major impact on my maturation process. I began to understand from the lyrics that life is not as simple as I had imagined. There are some things that I can obtain by hard work or chance, and those that are not for me. I used to blame myself for what I couldn’t have back then. I couldn’t tolerate losing something, being rejected, or not being able to achieve my goals. I didn’t want people to see me failed because it was something I didn’t want them to see. I tried to make someone proud of me, and if you’re wondering why this happened to me, I’m not sure either. As a result, I was unable to live in the present and be content. My daily bread was trust issues and cynical thoughts – I kept asking myself, “Is this good enough for me?” But life goes on, and I meet a lot of people and learn every single word, saying to me, “That’s life.” Something brighter than ever has caught my attention now. I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few things about serendipity – discovering goodness without looking for it.

You feel angry, disappointed, and helpless due to your loss and failure. It is really normal. Life is an endless suffering. Life would not give you a break. There is no pause button in life, just like when you play online game and your mom ask you to pause the game, you can’t do that, right?. As the time goes by, nothing is getting easier. I, myself, have a really pessimistic view for life. Through this pessimistic view, I could learn how to be chill in life and enjoy every ups-and-down. If world gives you lemon, makes it lemonade. It tastes sour for the first time, but you can make it tastes a lot better by adding other ingredients in it. Moreover, you even could make a profit from the lemon which tastes sour when you try it for the first time. At this point, it is just like our life. We have bad experiences, but after all we can learn from them and get a better result in the end. It will turn out as advantages for us after all. There is nothing wasted. Every wound will shape you; every scar will build your throne.

“It is just not my time, I will wait for it comes later”. I know each of us has a different pace to live, but it is not how it works. Beside than waiting your time, why don’t you make it come to you? Something is given for them who deserve. If you don’t deserve, just accept it that your time will not come to you. Well, for me, it is a good start as an acceptance stage, but as what I’ve said before that life doesn’t have a pause button. You are who can save yourself. What good for me is not always good for you. Just let it flow, whatever it will be, will be. “You can say like that because you have privileged life”, if that what you want to say as an argument, then you are really don’t deserve with something good. We have a different start, so our kind of good and success is also different. It is okay to be motivated by someone, but keep this in your mind, you are you, the one and only you.

As conclusion, you just need to be chill for what will happen for you. You wait for goodness come, but how if you don’t know that it has come in front of you? Or you have not ready to take them?. Binge-watching your favorite series, doing your assignment, listening to your favorite music, sleeping, or working, you can do anything what you want and something good will be there for you because you enjoy it in present. Make it not find it.

 

Journalist: Juhandi Dwi Putra Lyana 

Editor: Michael Tan 

Categories
Features Lifestyle

Rainbow After Storm

Have you ever counted how many unexpected blessings happened in your life? Blessing, somehow, is a slightly distorted mirror of serendipity. They both represent happy things that happened in our life. Even though people think that serendipity has a good meaning, the majority find it difficult to believe that serendipity will happen in real life. The concept seems similar to luck; we either get it or we do not. It evokes a sense of unreliability. While it might be true that we cannot entirely rely on it, however, serendipity is something that we may believe in our daily life.

Serendipity is a lovely word. When people first read or hear it, they might think it is a gracious or elegant word. Serendipity itself was used first by Horace Walpole, who was an English writer, in his letter on 28 January 1754. The etymology of the word “serendipity” was taken from the Persian Fairy Tales called “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The fairy tale conveys the story of three young princes set on a journey where they always discover something unexpected along the way (Zafarris, 2017). It is actually difficult to pinpoint the exact meaning of serendipity. Merriam-Webster said that “Serendipity is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable and or agreeable things not sought for.” (Merriam-Webster, 1996). Based on Collins dictionary, “Serendipity is the luck some people have in finding or creating interesting or valuable things by chance.” (Collins Dictionary, 2007). Even though there are various definitions of serendipity, all of them refer to the good things that surprisingly happened in life. It is not something that we try to chase down, yet it will catch us off guard and bring us joy.

Serendipity always happens around us. We might not notice it sometimes because people tend to focus on achieving their goals. It is understandable because what is life without purpose? Yet, along the way, it seems like we gradually cannot grasp the meaning of life itself. People end up trying to chase things that society deems “good” for humanity. Most people genuinely believe that the only way to have a good life is by trying to chase and achieve “good things” such as money and power. Not only chasing it for ourselves, but people also try to bring a higher stake by comparing their achievements with other people. Somehow, this life turns into a racing competition. In this world that rotates really fast, we tend to forget that there is a time when we must stop for a while and take a deep breath. If we are only busy looking for particular things, we will never see other things hidden beneath. It is only when we stop for a while that we will be able to see all of the good things that have already surrounded us. You might be surprised to see that we will miss many things if we keep racing. All those good little things and blessings are around us. They are the symbols of serendipity.

Serendipity might happen in the most unexpected way, yet it does not mean that it is a bad thing. There is a quote, “after the storm, here comes the rainbow”. Serendipity is also like that. It will not always be preceded by a good time. Sometimes, a good thing will be preceded by something that people deem bad. There will be painful experiences or failures that happened. However, then, we will gain something better. For example, maybe someone does not get accepted into the college that they want, but then that person will enter another college and probably find many good things within, such as great friends and valuable lessons. In addition, that person might enjoy their life much better in this new environment. This example shows the meaning of serendipity. That person does not get what they want in life, but there is something better that happens unexpectedly.   

Serendipity is the symbol of hope. It acts as a reminder that even if life seems hopeless, there is something good that might happen around the corner or even has already existed in our surroundings. All we need to do is stop for a while, look around, and see all of those serendipities that have already perched softly around us.  

 

Author: Alvita Utomo Putri 

Editor: Alma Anindita 

 

References:

Collins Dictionary. (n.d.). Citation. In Collinsdictionary.com dictionary. Retrieved April, 19, 2021, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/serendipity

Meriam-Webster. (n.d.). Citation. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved April, 19, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/serendipity

Zafarris, Jess (2017, December). The Etymology of “Serendipity”. Useless Etymology. Retrieved from https://uselessetymology.com/2017/12/02/the-etymology-of-serendipity/#:~:text=The%20word%20%E2%80%9Cserendipity%E2%80%9D%20was%20coined,looking%20for%20on%20their%20adventures.