Sadness In Listening To Hujan

This morning I had another listen to the Hujan acoustic showcase that they did a few years back because of all the #Hujan10tahun pictures that were taking over my instagram timeline. I wrote a paragraph when sharing the youtube video as a facebook status a couple of years back, and I reread it yesterday.

I said some stuff about how Hujan are not just a band, that they are a symbol of possibility, growth, maturity, passion, creativity, entrepreneurship, dedication, fun, and drive. I also said that I would be a very different person today if they were not as big a part of my life as they were, as they are.

And while listening to the showcase, I couldn't help but feel a deep sense of sadness. It made me realise how time changes us, our circumstances, and as a consequence, our relationships with people. Throughout listening to Hujan, I've been fortunate enough to have met and become close friends with so many wonderful people, people that have been and are so integral to shaping who I am today. And for that I am deeply grateful.

But also, those relationships, as do all relationships, I have learned, have evolved throughout the ten years of Hujan's existence. For better or for worse, they change, because people and their circumstances change, and as a result, relationships change, and a lot of them fade.

And I guess the sadness that I felt throughout the day as a result of re-listening to the showcase stems from being reminded of this fact, the fact that people and relationships change, no matter how much you want them to stay the same. And it's not like I dislike that fact or that I don't want to accept it. Rather, it's just me being sad about those things, and that's okay, to be sad about things that make you sad. You don't have to be happy with something to accept it. You can accept things with sadness too, I think.

About a month ago, one of my friends' life was changed because he got married, and as a result of that, our dynamic inevitably changed. I was, I am happy for him for being able to unite with the person he treasured the most in his life. And at the same time I was sad that a certain phase of life seemed to close on us right before our very eyes. There's that saying that goes, don't be sad that it's over; be happy that it happened. I feel like it should be: be sad that it's over AND happy that it happened. We shouldn't negate sadness to the realms of weakness. It's what makes us human. It's what adds to our humanity.

I have this feeling that these coming couple of months will be dynamic-changing as well for me. And I honestly don't know what to expect in that regard. And I guess I'm being sad because I'm aware that these few weeks that I have left (this is assuming that I have these few weeks to live, but questioning my mortality will have to be saved for another time) will be the closing of a chapter for me, and for the people close to me.

I am thankful that I have the set of people around me right now, with the relationships that we have right now. May we be set on the straight path in whatever we do.

A Good Weekend Reflected

So I've just had a pretty good weekend, in my book. Went to Kuala Terengganu for a forum where I was a panelist alongside a close friend, got to hang out a bunch with good people, wrote a couple of poems, and to top it all off, I got to witness New Zealand winning the 2015 World Cup. All in all, smiles by the time I got back on the plane back.

But as I was scrolling through the twitter and the instagram, I felt a feeling slowly creeping onto me, a feeling of sadness, more than anything else, really. I blame Twenty-one Pilots' acoustic rendition of Tear In My Heart for this.

I got to sort my thoughts out when I got back to my apartment room, and I ended up with the question: am I doing enough good in the world to make it a better place?

And the answer to that is: rasa macam tak cukup. Far from enough. And I guess that's what made me sad. That even on good days, they weren't good enough, at least not for me. And I started thinking, "wouldn't it be great if we knew when we were doing good enough? There'd be a meter we can check to see if the stuff we did through the day or even throughout our lives were enough to be called good, and we can physically see it so that it could guide us in our daily lives."

But then I thought, hey, maybe we don't know how much good is good enough because we're not supposed to know. Because if we knew, no, if I knew, then being the lazy human being that I am, I'd keep my deeds to a bare minimum. And if everyone who did good only did the bare minimum, then that'd suck for the world because there's a whole buncha other people who don't really care all that much about doing any good. We'd be doing just enough for ourselves, and unfortunately, that's nowhere near enough for the world in general.

I came to thinking that maybe feeling like I'm not doing enough is a good thing. Maybe that by having this feeling that I need to do more will drive me to do exactly that: more. And the more good we give out to the world, the better it gets. it's idealistic of me to think this, but I'm a naïve person, so yeah.

And I think that if ever there came a time that I felt like I've done enough good in the world, then that would be when I'm at my lowest, since I would feel content with myself. And I don't want that. At least not the me right now. The me right now has this burning urge to prove to myself that I can do good things in the world, and can be useful to the people around him. I look at myself and see this lowly useless piece of faeces and everyday is just a struggle to prove myself wrong, to be able to say to myself that hey, you're not a good for nothing after all.

So feel insecure Anwar. It's alright.