Of Money and Happiness

Often times, in melodramatic Indonesian drama, or be it Malaysian, or some shitty Venezuela's soap opera, the perfect formula to make television's junkies cry is by the theme of unrequited love of a rich girl towards a poor guy or vice versa. Soon towards the ending the rich ones had to choose between the wealth or their partner's love.

So they say, in this high times of globalization, where television affecting our lives, the money and happiness cards were always played in our daily conversation. Well, maybe I am exaggerating but we must have come across this question, "Which one would you choose? Money or happiness?".

The problem with most people is, they confuse between money and happiness. Somehow or the other, rightly or wrongly, they believe that it must be one or the other. Somehow or the other, they believe that you cannot have both. What they fail to see is the word beLIEve contains LIE.

Don't ever confuse money and happiness. Money is money. Happiness is happiness. Both did not canceled out each other. Ones can choose to be rich and happy, rich and in misery, poor and happy or poor and in misery. Obviously the first choice is the best, the last one is like hell on earth but it did not make the second and third even better. As time goes by, it is most likely that the people who choose the second and third options will fall to the fourth soon.

I believe in people's potential. Whoever you are, how deep your situation is in your own shithole, you have the ability to rise up and have better living. You just have to strive for a good life over and over again.


Why choose when you can have both?

Grameen Bank and Peoples Potential

One fine day, on December 2007, I was hanging around in my best friend house at Jalan Semarak rehearsing for our next big performance. Around noon, he went to the kitchen making me drinks and I walk around his house and I stop in his father's small library. Viewing the shelves, I suddenly grab a green-red book entitled 'Banker to the Poor'. What makes me grab this book? Well, the tittle grabs me first. I was thinking this book is like 'The Confession of an Economic Hit Man' (first and third world economics control) and I hope I can get the same thrill if I read 'Banker to the Poor'. So I borrow the book with promise to finish it before I fly back to Wellington. Because of the Cameron Highlands-Kuala Lumpur long five hours bus journey and the peaceful Cameron Highlands environment, I manage to finish the book in one week. I found the book was so inspiring, way better than 'The Confession of an Economic Hit Man'.

'Banker to the Poor' is an autobiography of Dr Muhammad Yunus (picture above), a Bangladeshi, founder of Grameen Bank and 2006 Nobel Prize Winner. He was first a lecturer in one of university in the States, then come back to Bangladesh after it got separated from Pakistan. He introduced micro-credit or micro-lending to mostly poor mothers or women in Bangladesh to help them pay their debts and start new business to help support the families. The system is different from conventional bank lending that makes it impossible for the poor to even get loans soon driving them to take loan from loan sharks. For me it is so beautiful on how the loan make way based on trust and respect. He treat the poor as they are human being, giving them trust to handle their own fate. The well-treated-manners soon giving the poor hopes, motivation to get out from the poor line and knowing that if they are initially poor, that doesn't mean that they are doomed to be poor until the day they die. If you really want to understand deeply about what I blab about, go read the book!

Actually, my initial point in this post is:

1. Even how low you are, how poor you are, there are still hopes for you to make your life better and do not give up.
2. Treat others well even if you are far more better than them personally or economically. Believe that people can change. Give them some try, would you?
3. Capitalism is okay but with socialism spirit in it.

p/s- Writing about 'Banker for the Poor' reminds me of Mr Suhardi, my friend's father. He is a great man yet with a low profile attitude and I do respect him so much. The copy that I read is his. He passed away few months ago. Al-Fatihah.

The Beginning

Light up a cigarette in the morning on your bed. How did you go as far at this point? How did you could hold a cigarette in your lips and have the strength to hold a lighter? In simple words, HOW DID ALL THIS START?Somehow, if you try to think how it really works from the beginning, PRECISELY, you could find many routes towards NOW and maybe many kind of the BEGINNING. I call it 'think reversely baby'. Let say those routes are like a straight highway, and you could enter so many exits on your way towards NOW, then maybe NOW could be somehow different from what you experience.

Do you have any regret for not entering the right exits?
I just move on and go back if it is available and necessary.

But the real BEGINNING just too hard to explain.