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Punya alter ego?
Saya tidak tau persis arti istilah alter ego. Asumsi saya, itu mungkin masuk ke rangkaian psikoanalisisnya Sigmund Freud. Tapi yang jelas, dalam pembicaraan sehari-hari, alter ego itu mungkin seperti “siapa karakter ideal versi kamu yang kamu tau itu BUKAN kamu”. Alter ego berhubungan dengan sisi-sisi buruk kita, atau apapun yang kita nilai sebagai kelemahan kita.
Menyenangkan sekali main-main dengan istilah ini, karena kalau kita jujur dan disaat yang sama, menerima diri kita apa adanya, kita tau kalau kita jauh sekali dari sempurna, bahkan dalam ukuran kesempurnaan yang kita buat sendiri.
Jadi, ini karakter alter ego saya:
Namanya Andi. Dia tinggi, berperut rata, dan tidak pakai kacamata. Dia agak-agak brengsek sedikit. Perokok dan kadang juga minum alkohol. Dia cuek, tapi sebenarnya pintar dan bisa meraih apapun kalau mau sedikit fokus.
John Fiske and John Hartley, didalam Reading Television, mengutip kata-kata Anatol Rapoport:
Just as all living organisms live in certain specialized environments to which they adapt and which completely determine their lives, so do human beings live, to a significant extent, in an ocean of words. The difference is that the human environment is, to a large extent, man made. We secrete words into the environment around us just as we secrete carbon dioxide and, in doing so, we create an invisible semantic environment of words which is part of our existence in quite as important ways as the physical environment. The content of verbal output does not merely passively reflect the complex social, political, and economic reality of the human race: it interacts with it as well. As our semantic environment incorporates the verbal outputs secreted into it, it becomes both enriched and polluted, and these changes are largely responsible for the course of human history.
(Rapoport 1969, p. 36) dari Hartley & Fiske, 2004, hal 49.
Kutipan ini, menurut saya memancing banyak hal untuk dipikirkan. Pertama-tama, adalah tentang kalimat pembuka
“just as all living organisms live in certain specialized environments“.
Benar, bahwa semua makhluk hidup, khususnya orang, hidup di lingkungannya yang spesifik. Spesifik? Saya lebih suka menyebutnya… personal. Dan sama seperti kita tinggal di lingkungan fisik yang sangat personal, cara kita memaknai dunia disekeliling kita juga sangat personal. Kita membangun realita kita sendiri. Semua orang punya caranya sendiri. Semua orang punya dunia sendiri. Kita punya kebenaran-kebenaran sendiri yang kita percayai.
Kita mengkonstruksi realita kita sendiri. Membangun definisi-definisi kita sendiri. Menentukan apa yang kita sukai, percayai, benci, gilai, jauhi… apapunlah. “Jalan” kita, hanya kita sendiri yang tahu. “Cara” kita, hanya kita sendiri yang tahu. Saya jadi ingat kata-kata dari Atticus Finch, seorang tokoh di novel klasik To Kill A Mockingbird:
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
Dan sampai batas tertentu, semua perilaku orang, bahkan sampai yang paling aneh sekalipun, akan mungkin kita lakukan juga kalau kita punya pengalaman-pengalaman yang sama dengan orang itu… kalau kita tejebak dalam pilihan-pilihan yang harus dia ambil.
Semuanya mulai menjadi menarik saat kita melihat orang lain, yang benar-benar berbeda latar belakang, yang mempunyai pengalaman-pengalaman berbeda dengan kita, tapi punya cara membangun realita yang sama dengan kita. Hanya perlu waktu sebentar, saat kita sadar bahwa dia kemudian mengambil pilihan-pilihan yang sama dengan kita jika ada di posisinya.
Dan semuanya menjadi sangat menarik saat dia… menarik, secara intrinsik.
Dan kalau begini, kita mungkin akan merasa lucu… bahwa ditengah banyaknya kemungkinan, variasi, kekacauan; yang semuanya bisa membentuk orang-orang dengan pengalaman-pengalaman unik yang sangat kompleks, kita bisa menemukan orang lain yang dengannya kita bisa merasa nyaman.
Umberto Eco, in a book titled “Serendipities: Language and Lunacy” wrote:
Columbus, on the contrary, burning with a sacred fire, good navigator but bad astronomer,
thought the earth smaller than it was. Naturally neither he nor the learned men of Salamanca suspected that between Europe and Asia there lay another continent. And so you see how complicated life is, and how fragile are the boundaries between truth and error, right and wrong. Though they were right, the sages of Salamanca were wrong; and Columbus, while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right—thanks to serendipity.
Despite the current debate about who discovered America first; either Vespucci, Colombus, Chinese sailors, or even, on one seminar held in Jakarta; Indonesian sailors, Umberto Eco described what the meaning of serendipity to Colombus.
“Colombus, while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right-thanks to serendipity“
Eco also told us how fragile the boundaries between right or wrong, truth or error. And I think, it can be applied to anything; whether it love, career, friendship, or everything. Does it right to chase the love of your life, if she already had someone? Does it right to chose a career for the love of it, even if its under appreciated?
I think the same question had been answered by Colombus, before he decided to go to a place that he thought as “India”. And what happened next is just serendipity. Its not about pure luck. Not about mystical rule of the universe. Not about the mysterious favor of Fortuna, the goddess of good luck in Greek Mythologies. Its about the fairness that nature gave to those whose pursued faithfully his dreams. Some would say that he’s just lucky. Some would say, it’s all about divine interventions. For me, its both of them; in the frame of a simple fortunate accident(s).
I’m having a mental breakdown at the campus library when I saw him.
He is one of my friend. I know his name. Sometimes I talked to him. The thing is… at most of the times, he talks to himself. He laugh, smiles, gets angry… grins.. whispers… at himself.
And now, at the time I wrote this, he is smiling, and laughing happily, but with no one talking to him. Everyone who walks through him would turn their eyes to him for just a moment… knowing that something is wrong with this guy, but do nothing. They afraid. So am i.
I wish I know what to do, and have enough courage to do it.
I think I have a bad taste for fashion. Everything that I chose to wear, unfortunately, always ended to make me looked very… old fashioned.
Maybe, I’m a little bit too obsessed with dark colors, like brown, grey, black. This three colors is the color for about 50% of my shirts. And if I added white, then the percentage would include 45% of my shirts. So, its four color for 95% of my shirts. Geez.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, the other color is the one that others gave to me.
I think I’m way too old fashioned. But who cares? Don’t judge the book by its cover! Well, don’t always judge the book by its cover. Well, this too seems impossible, because we first judge the book by its cover. This how it works.
Well, then, lets just say… I’m not into fashion. Its not what I’m good at.
Maybe, we are still elementary students when scientists in CERN research center conducted their first research to discover a new way to communicate through computer networks. We are still climbing stone walls near the cafetaria, learns the very basic of mathematics. We got busy with our homework, and soccer, and gossips.
Maybe, we are still elementary students while Tim Berners Lee created the hypertext language, thus became the foundation of the internet. We are still talking about our first crushes, without having no idea what that really is. And do nothing about it. For most of us, its one of our greatest time. Its when we don’t have to bother with family conflicts, responsibilities, social judgements, and all grown up stuffs. We’re just simply do our homework, and play like there’s no tomorrow.
Maybe, we are still in junior high school while internet starts to grow up to be one of the biggest invention ever, beside fire, wheel, bombs, and electricity. We’re having our first boyfriend or girlfriend. We learned to fit in a certain peer group. We learned to compete in some competition.
Then comes senior high school. Things change. There are Yahoo, Google, and then Friendster. And we are get busy with our own handphones, future plans, organization activities, and for some of us; boyfriends and girlfriends.
But then college time. And then Facebook time. And somehow, we crashes each other. And its time for us to once again, entering each others life.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
-Aristotle
Beberapa hari ini saya melihat banyak yang menarik di tayangan berita di televisi.
Pertama, ada suara latar belakang (backsound) di berita televisi.
Kedua, sering sekali pakai kata-kata “diduga”, “kabarnya”, dan “konon”.
Ketiga, memberitakan orang yang dipanggil jadi saksi oleh polisi sebagai “yang bersalah”.
Saya jadi susah membedakan antara berita dan infotainment. Eh tunggu, berita dan infotainment memang seharusnya berbeda, kan?
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