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| Quote by Andrea Hirata, Author of The Dreamer (Sang Pemimpi, Tetralogi Laskar Pelangi) |
Back then when I was a little I
dreamt to be a star. I don’t remembered the details anymore, whether I want to
become a famous singer or a movie star (maybe the later lol), but somehow I could still pictured myself
wearing that flashy green-red dress, brought laughter to everyone who listened
to my childish chirps. It was nonsense indeed, but there’s nothing wrong about
dreaming big. I was a kid, at least I did once dream of something like that
before I become such a boring adult I am right now.
I was not a peculiar kid at all.
I was pretty normal, a little bit chatty and noisy, but normal I guess. We
lived comfortably enough, far from luxury, but poverty was not an uncommon
thing in this era. There was a time when we could not afford some text books
for school, so we had to stick with the old books given by our older cousins.
But that was still okay. At least my parents were still able to provide us with
a home to stay, 3 meals a day, clothes, education, loves and all. That was indeed a
blessing. I believe we siblings could never thank my parents enough.
We were dreamers before, but not
one anymore. Reality hit us hard, like it hit our predecessors.
But still, there’s no harm in
dreaming. I’ve come to give things up easily, without batting an eye, without looking
back to what I have left behind. Regrets? I have so many of them that I have
already lost count of them.
Now you understand why I
sometimes decide to stop writing. All my writing somehow turned like this,
dark, gloomy, and depressing.
Okay let’s go back to the topic,
shall we?
So yesterday I just watched an
old post of Stand Up Comedy show in my country. One of the contestants brought
the topic about teaching kids in a rural village on the foot of Semeru
Mountain. He asked the kids about their dreams, and some of them mentioned to
be a singer, a movie star (which I could relate), a doctor, a politician, and
so on. But there’s a kid who said he didn’t dare to aim big and stated he just
wanted to be a farmer just like his father. And may be his father’s father’s
father’s father’s father’s father.
On top of that we are Asians
after all. Those stereotypes about us considering doctor, engineering, or a
simple office worker as an inspiring job were sadly quite true. And he was just
a kid. It’s not because a farmer is not an inspiring dream or anything. The
farmer he mentioned was the kind of traditional-conventional farmers who worked
their ass until they got wasted. It’s the kind of a job you had to do simply
because you had no other choices. To make a kid losing all hopes and stop
believing in his dreams are just too atrocious of us. What kind of cruel world
did the kid have lived that it made him stop dreaming? What kind of people are
we to be able to create such a horrendous world?
I mean we were quite poor kids
then. There were a lot of things we were unable to afford, but it didn’t stop
us to imagine things were affordable. I remember that we used to collect the
dumps of the plastic wraps of any kind of snacks we were unable to buy so we
could role play the cashier and the customer. We made a bunch of trees to be our 2 storey
house (which was pretty rare back then). We dig some holes near the river
contaminated by the residue of tin mining to be our Jacuzzi. We were poor but
we were still able to dream the unimaginable. Because we had lived in a world
where we thought that dreams were might be possible to come true. At least that
what I had believed.
Now I wonder what the adults back then had thought when I
told them about my dreams and what all the teachers had thought when they asked
us to mention our dreams. Did they believe that we would be able to pursue
them? Did they think they were just simply dreams? Did they think we would come
to realize that our dreams were nearly impossible? Did they even believe in us?
In the end, not all of the dreams have to come
true. Not all of us will become somebody we thought we would be. Life just
happens and dream just ends. We might pursue them, we might fail, we might
stop, we might try again, we might quit pursuing them all together, but in the
end we will still keep continue living. And try to pursue our other precious
dreams. May be not too gaudy, but still precious.
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