When I think of my Borobudur experience, my heart is so full that I can hardly verbalise all the emotions that have begun to well up and run wild.
How do I even start to describe the magical three days we spent in Central Java? My words are just alphabets on a page, constrained by language and vocabulary, even by the alarming reality of the present – cars zooming by outside my window, piles of dirty laundry in that corner, but in my mind – I am free to roam the memories. I am walking along a curved pebbled path in the misty rice terraces of Selo Griyo, I am following the gaze of thousand year old stone buddhas in Borobudur towards the fiery Mt. Merapi, I am stumbling towards an abandoned church in the lush jungle greenery of coffee and tamarind trees, I am babbling about Machiavelli to our local guide Wanto – who happens to be a fellow philosophy lover who drives tourists around by day and reads Nietzsche by night. The trip was filled with so much wonder, not only of the scenery and temples, but as always, also of the people we met and befriended.
As with Myanmar, never was I more acutely aware of the meaning of privilege. Our guide was 33, as intelligent and eloquent as anybody in a developed country, perhaps more so than most! He saw the importance of being worldly, taught himself English, and began a freelance tourism business. But it’s hard, he says, when he meets people from all over the world on a daily basis, and they tell him of sights and cultures that he can’t possibly hope to see anytime soon. Now that I know what’s outside, he says, it makes it even harder to not long for more. He bought over a souvenir stall near the temples for passive income and hopes that he can expand his business by e-marketing, taking one step at a gain to reach the elusive concept of success. “Sometimes I think I can be more than just a a freelance car driver in Java, but sometimes not.”
Those words have stayed with me as I came back to Singapore and dove back into work. Are we really so different? Sometimes I think I can be more than just some white collar worker living a 9-5 life somewhere in Asia (ok, more like 9-10), and sometimes not! But unlike Wanto, I make enough money for privileges like going to travel, see the parts of the world one at a time, and if I want to change the status quo, I know I can go to grad school and further my education in the methodological fashion of a developed society. He is every bit as intelligent as me or my peers, but why shouldn’t he have access to what we have? On the flight back to Singapore, a book I had read in college popped into my head – Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen. Indeed, what is the meaning of development, if not that all deserving people could have the freedom of opportunity to reach their full potential? Too much of where we are today as individuals are determined by the progress of the society we were born into, and that’s not right! Feeling both extremely fortunate and extremely powerless, I return to trying to figure out my life and career and all that confusion which comes with being in your early twenties, but that end goal of working for development has never been clearer. 🙂
Musings of a Leaf 