Here in Jakarta, you often see the street performers selling their services in restaurants, street-side eateries (warung), buses, and etc. Before I started taking buses as my primary means of transportation, I used to view them from a slightly different perspective.
The perspective still remains the same to this day, but in a different depth. In the past, I empathized with some of these street performers, but there was a certain glass wall that separates their world from mine.
Now, the glass wall still exists, but thinner. The glass wall exists not because I de-humanized them, or look down on them. It exists because I believe to a varying extent everyone has glass wall that separates the ‘I’ from the ‘them.’
In my three years here, I got emotional in the bus at three different occasions. The first happened when this girl entered the bus, and spoke about her predicament. On first glance, she looked like a male. Rather thin, short hair, and dark. Well, it was night time, and the bus’s lights were off.
As she was talking, I half-heartedly listened to her words. She said that it wasn’t by choice that she was on the street begging for money. She had a certain disease, and one of her breasts was already removed. She said she had several scars in her body the size of a quarter-cent American coin (or more or less the size of a 500 Rupiah coin).
Well, like I said, I was listening to her half-heartedly. And I passed an immediate judgment that the individual was a liar, trying to buy the listeners’ sympathies. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. But in the end, it didn’t matter.
As she walked down the bus’s aisle to collect the alms (small changes in coins mostly), she went to me. I passed her some bills, and I couldn’t help but notice one particularly large circular wound on her arm. I gulped.
After she left the bus, I couldn’t help fighting back my tears. I felt like such a hypocrite.
Within my capability at that time, I could have taken her to the nearest hospital for medical treatment. Or I could have given her more money so she could go to a hospital or a clinic by herself. But I didn’t.
Another part of me tried to reason, "How would you know?" Then it went, "How much must you help her? How much are you willing to sacrifice until she is healed?"
Maybe she was a prostitute, maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she had Aids, maybe she had cancer or a skin disease. It didn’t matter. I made my decision then and there, just like all the rest of the people in the bus at that time. It was …. I really don’t know how to put to words what we did. It’s like we close our conscience, close our heart, even after witnessing that a fellow human being is suffering right there in front of our eyes. Perhaps, she was on the brink of life and death. But it doesn’t matter. Because I, made a decision.
And that decision hurts. It hurts then. And it still hurts to this day whenever I reflected upon the incident.
When I was young, I wanted to be several things. One of the things I wanted to be was to be someone very powerful. As a powerful being, I could defend the weak and the innocent. I could protect them. But as I grew up, I learned that dreaming is a different thing than doing.
I still have that dream. I wanted to do more for people. This dream quieted once. Right after my brother got ill. Then the dream died when he passed away. And I fell into despair. I lost faith in humanity. I lost faith with myself. I lost faith with God. I even lost faith in love, forgiveness, and many good things in life.
It took me almost two years to recover. But a few people had to suffer before I recovered. Indirectly or directly, I caused them pains, because I shut myself from them.
They tried to cheer me up. To give me hope and encouragement. To be there for me as best as they could. But I was in too deep with despair. During those time, my heart slowly grew colder. Alas, the only thing I needed and wanted desperately, they couldn’t have been the wiser. And I blame them not.
That’s the way I have been accustomed to getting up after falling down. Time. Leave me alone, and let everything naturally heals me.
The more people try to sympathize and try to help me, the more hurt I felt. It is my ultimate selfishness. I’d rather I suffer by my ownself, rather than let those that I care suffer along with me. I don’t want those I care worry about me. The more they worry about me, the more I feel guilty. The more I will stay away from them.
It is, my ultimate selfishness.
One day, I woke up, and heard a voice. The voice said, "…you don’t have to bear it all by your own. I am always there, and I have always been there for you."
I cried. Then I slowly willed myself to get up. For I knew that the time to get up had come. That the time to bring myself out of the self-made prison had come.
A few months since then, I know. I still have not healed. I still have not recovered. The wound’s still there, but the pain has diminished considerably.
I began my life anew, for God knows, the fifth, or the sixth, or the seventh time. And I also know that there are things I need to change.
But I know. God is good. God has always been good to all of us if we care enough to feel and to listen. Whether Jesus is God or not as so many Christians and non-Christians ‘believe,’ I don’t care. Whether there is a God or not, I, too, do not care.
Because God by any other name is still our Creator. What I have, let it be put to God’s use. What sins and mistakes I make and have made, let redemption runs its course naturally. For it is often I asked myself, and I asked God - of the purpose of my life. For it is often, too, that I asked, which path should I walk.
The number of times I have stumbled, gotten lost, and erred, blessed was I, of the numerous opportunities to rise up, to redeem my sins and mistakes. God has been very good to me.
In times of darkness, if only we remember to open the windows to our cage a little, a gust of fresh air breathes life, hope, forgiveness, and love unto us. A mind and heart that have grown cold need the warmth of the sun.
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February 18, 2006
Andrias Yose
