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somehow kata kata bijak di atas terinspirasi oleh beberapa orang:  Wayne, Evy, Yani dan David Cook ( yes, the 2008 American Idol :))

Soulmate in Reality: FAQs 

What is soulmate? Dictionary.com and Wikipedia.com define soulmate as ‘a term for someone with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, friendship, love, intimacy, sexuality, and/or compatibility’.

But what is soulmate in reality? And how do you find your soulmate in real life? First, does soulmate have to be of opposite gender? Although some might not agree with me, let me use an opposite-gender assumption -- and because it will be more interesting too ! --.

Is finding soulmate a progressive process? After some life episodes, you think you have found your soulmate but as you mature or change through the course of life you find out someone else is better off as one. Or, is it a one-time conviction; after long iterative dynamics and interactions with people you will then be struck with a faith: “hmm… he is my soulmate….” Permanent.

Wikipedia.com illustrates further on soulmate using examples of various movies, some of which are mainstream Hollywood ones like Serendipity, Something Gotta Give, The Lake House and even teenage movie series Dawson’s Creek. It looks that finding someone as soulmate involves delicate interactions, heart pounding events, mixture of feelings, all of which lead to a unity of emotions or some sort of bonds. As a process, however, how can you be so sure you’re at the top of the ladder and not on a bar in between?

Should finding a soulmate be a reciprocal situation? If you find him as your soulmate, should he find you as his soulmate too? The similar rhetoric is whether it can be one-to-many relationship or it must be one-to-one. You consider him your soulmate but he might think another person as his, or you might have ‘peer-soulmates’. Oops...

So then, is soulmate always singular? or can it be plural, like classmates, roommates? Take a look at those who have great influence on your life, but who follow nature’s law of “nobody’s perfect”: one who’s always around, a shoulder to cry on, purely a big-brother kind; another one, who connects well plus some affection involved; another one, someone with perfect chemistry, but you two stay in no-flirting zone as he is too good a friend to ‘screw  with’; last one (to complete the dimensions!) despite distant differences, the universe seems to unite two of you and bring you to be for each other. Can you have partial soulmate in some of them? Or does it have to be only one among them?

Such a pragmatic pondering I have to admit. At the end of the day, I think having soulmate has to do with believing that two of you belong to each other and in what may be called an ‘inexplicably intrinsic nature( bah.. is there such a phrase?!). This somehow means whether or not you’ll eventually end up with each other in such a physical sense. A pity though if not, but hmm... I guess that’s why it’s called soulmate, not lifemate or livingmate! 

No tastes could’ve been so similar

No feelings could’ve been so in unison

(Lake House movie)

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... to my friends undergoing new exciting pathways, with chances of finding soulmates or realizing that indeed they have already got theirs all along!...

One November Sunday afternoon, out of lethargy and lazy mood, I dug my DVD collection, and decided to watch a movie called The Painted Veil, a love story set in China in 1920s. A newly-married English couple living in Shanghai was shaken by adultery committed by the wife. The husband, a dedicated microbiologist, took revenge by dragging his wife, an attractive London upper-class young woman, to move to a remote mountainous place where he joined a mission to help in cholera epidemics. As fragile as she was to cope with the hardship, she survived the other facets of life but the husband’s tight vengeance. “I despise myself for allowing me to love you once”, he explained his distant attitude in that already distant place for her. Through intricate but inevitably natural processes in the middle of nowhere, they eventually embraced each other, submitting understanding and forgiveness and stick to what mattered most, and discarded the rest. I was indeed intrigued by the inscription on this movie’s cover which made me decide to buy the DVD: “Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people”

Finished with the movie, I summed up my Sunday evening by finishing a narrative documentary book which I had started a few months a go, but stopped after more or less one-fourth of the pages. Ciao Asmara is written by a young English man, describing his exploration of Eritrea when he volunteered as an English teacher in that country in 1990s. Eritrea is a north-eastern African country, located by the coast of Red Sea, which was once colonized by Italy and then British Empire, and it was federated to Ethiopia in early 1950s. Eritrea was finally recognized independence in 1993. The writer depicted different angles of his encounters with Eritrean people and life during those independence years, with history and memories of wars being inseparable from their lives. So thick also was the expectation on what independence had to actually bring to the people. The woman-gender issues are complex (like in anywhere else?), in which women face the oppression from men and from the traditional ‘laws’, whereas the latter means pressure from women themselves through inherited norms which were held tightly. His exploration was forced to stop because he had to leave the country when a war broke out with Ethiopia in late 1990s.

Back to why I came up with the title of this writing….. Surprisingly Eritrea and China did have connection! During the fight against Ethiopia, soldiers from EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) apparently went to China for learning Mao teaching. And the writer spent most of his volunteering work in China and Eritrea!

Those two Sunday episodes also brought up religion and God on the table. As grateful as he was for being alive after some life-screening experiences in the war, Awot, one important character in Ciao Asmara, bluntly said “There is no God. If there was God, He wouldn’t allow such prolonged sufferings to Eritreans like what has happened to us”. In The Painted Veil, a sister of Catholic missionary convent where Kitty (the wife) volunteered, contemplated on her falling in love (with God) when she was young and her being seduced by the romanticism of religious life. Through time, her relationship with Him changed and turned into constant peaceful indifference, “like old husband and wife sitting on the couch but rarely speak”, she said.

And finally, the ultimate answer to “What do China and Eritriea have in common?” is that through the movie and the book, the two countries represent my success of creating a beautiful Sunday at home. They satisfied my fondness on exploring landscapes in foreign places, which was fulfilled by the gorgeous backdropping China mountains in The Painted Veil, and with a bit of imagination by the European, African, Arabic ambiences in the Eritrean towns depicted in Ciao Asmara. On top of that, I got a bonus of pondering on love and distance, on war and people, on passion and faith; yup quite a full-fledged Sunday....!

Perjalanan ke pulau Buton lagi. Pencaharian yang berlanjut untuk data data demi tercapainya ambisi pribadi ini. Keresahan singgah, seiring bekerja kerasnya  kepala mempersiapkan setiap langkah untuk delapan pekan ke depan. Pendaratan pesawat dan bersandarnya kapal membawa ke tempat tujuan tidak juga menghantar sedikit kelegaan.

Setibanya di rumah bukit itu, di teras itu, terhampar cantiknya kota Baubau dengan berlatar belakang teluk dan pulau pulau. Duduk di situ, waktu tak terasakan, berhadapan dengan agenda kerja dan bahan penelitian survey desa. Di tengah ambiens alam yang molek itu, serasa ada titik terang sedikit di jiwa dan kepala. Apalagi di waktu malam, dengan bumbu hamburan kunang kunang raksasa di sekujur galaksi. I could only wish that the effects would be permanent….

Kunjungan ke desa desa, wawancara, mengejar responden, diskusi kelompok, hambatan demi hambatan, sandungan bergantian. Kelelahan perlahan membukit melemahkan semangat untuk bertahan. Mata hati hampir terkatup karena tekanan kerja, tetapi ternyata ‘ia’ masih sempat mengintip kehidupan di sekeliling. Keluarga dengan rumah kayu, bapak-ibu dengan setengah lusin anak anak di rumah, tidur beralaskan tikar dan berbantal karung beras, tidak ada tempat tidur apalagi furniture mewah, bau kayu bakar sepanjang hari dari dapur yang bertaburan abu dan arang. Kesibukan hanya berkisar di lahan pertanian, dan pemenuhan hidup secara subsisten.

Sore waktu santai, canda anak2 di samping ibu yang menyusui si bungsu, satu anak bermain dengan kotak rokok sang ayah, tidak ada mainan yang lain. Kasihan? Awalnya iya, tapi belakangan terasa kasihan itu lebih patut ditujukan ke diri sendiri. Gelak tawa  mereka begitu lepas, celotehan anak satu ke yang lain terlihat mengasyikan mereka. They were genuinely happier than the restless me, I guess even than most of us coming from the metropolitans!

Sang ayah sempat bercerita, ada satu anak dalam keluarga besarnya datang menangis kepadanya karena orang tuanya tidak mampu lagi membiayai sekolahnya. Padahal sekolah dasar yang katanya sudah disantuni oleh dana BOS (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah). Jadilah anak itu, yang selalu juara di kelasnya, satu diantara enam atau entah berapa anak yang ada di rumah itu, menjadi bagian dari kesederhanaan keluarga itu, tetapi yang penting bisa meneruskan ‘kemewahan’ bersekolah dengan seragam putih merahnya. “Meskipun saya belum bisa membelikan sepatu untuknya” lanjut ayah itu. Ah bagaimana hati ini tidak tersentak dan terketuk keras. Untuk sejenak dan beberapa jenak berikutnya, kelelahan kerja terpupuskan dengan kontemplasi atas semua yang ada di depan mata selama beberapa pekan di desa desa itu. Apalah artinya keresahan dalam proyek pribadi ini dibanding dengan perjuangan keluarga itu – satu dari berjuta di negri ini-, tanpa ambisi yang muluk muluk, hanya keinginan sederhana untuk terus maju selangkah demi selangkah, dan tetap bisa tertawa lepas menikmati keseharian….

Perjalanan terus berlanjut. Desa demi desa di pulau itu. Manusiawi rasanya kalau kelelahan itu singgah lagi. Penat, tujuh minggu sudah semua rutinitas kerja itu. Ingin cepat pulang! Tetapi, kembali mata air kecil menyemburkan kesegaran ke hati letih ini. I fell in love! Wawancara dengan responden di desa terakhir. Tiba tiba muncullah sang istri dengan anak laki laki bungsu keluarga itu, smiley face, friendly eyes with curious look at me, and he approached me back and forth; his large eye-balls glued to me. Kerap terjerembab karena langkahnya yang tertatih tatih; tak ada satu tangisanpun, malah sesekali tertawa kecil mungkin geli terhadap dirinya sendiri. How can I not fall in love with this tough-but-friendly one-year old toddler?! Our chemistry worked. He gladly welcomed the candies I handed to him. Amazing, the rest of my interviews, also my days in that village, felt much much lighter, tiredness cured by the effects of his long glances and his wide innocent smiles to me.

Was Ramdan (his name) a reminder of something that I have long ignored in my life? Was I so drained with work that such a vague affection at the end of my non-affectionate trip meant so much as fertilizer in my dried soils ?

Ujung perjalanan itu akhirnya tiba. Kuesioner tertumpuk rapi untuk ditelaah dan dianalisa. Bayangan jalan panjang melelahkan hadir di kepala, semua penuh ketidakpastian. Tetapi paling tidak pesan pesan hidup lain dari delapan pekan itu terekam pasti di hati...

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hasil coretan di rumah 'Ibu Kraton', July-August 2007

After almost two months in Buton island for field work, visiting villages surrounding the island’s forests, making trips of at least 900 kilometers, the most unforgettable impression from the car journeys are the uncomfortable jumpy rides due to the bad roads!

Buton island has always been the main producer of asphalt in this country. My memory went back to one famous question in geography exam in primary school “Which island is the biggest asphalt producer in our country?”. That was how I came to know the name ‘Buton’. And now, being in the island, my trips passed many asphalt mining spots, just a few meters away from the unasphalted roads.

Several villages are the core places of asphalt mines. In one village called Wining, the mine has been established since the Dutch period, and is still productive now with some years off in the past. Forest areas have been sacrificed for mining construction, and based on the ongoing exploration, very likely many more will be. Even without detailed calculation, it’s obvious how much this island is supposed to earn from its asphalt. But ironically it’s more obvious that neither the roads’ welfare nor the local people’s has enjoyed their next-door richness. Poverty prevails, rocky and pot-holed roads are everywhere!

When a question was directed to an authority in the island by one villager who lives side by side with the asphalt mine, “How come the road in our village is completely rusak and never reconstructed, while our village is a major asphalt source in this island ?”. The big guy proudly answered “Yes, the roads in your village might not be that good, but there are more villages in Buton that have no roads at all”. What an answer coming from a leader! That completes his incompetence in fulfilling even the most basic infrastructure needs in his area of authority. It may as well prove his lack of concerns to his people’s needs, perhaps because his very personal needs have been well fulfilled?? ....

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from my 2007 Buton 'rattan' episode, July-August 2007