Yah, kawan-kawan sekalian yang sedang menikmati asiknya menapaki hidup di tempat yang baru, mungkin sudah kenyang menelan pertanyaan sejenis. Atau bahkan hingga kalian bosan mendengarnya.
Saya sendiri sudah lupa kapan saya pertama kali menerima pertanyaan serupa, khususnya sejak saya pertama kali memutuskan untuk mengecap kehidupan yang belum pernah saya temui sebelumnya. Entah kapan pula, saya pernah menyuguhkan jawaban yang lengkap, karena saya merasa jawaban yang saya berikan tak pernah lengkap. Memang apa asiknya rasa penasaran yang segera terbalas, bahkan hanya dengan untaian kata? Biarkanlah jiwa dan pikiranmu memberinya makna.
 |
| gambar dari sini |
Filosofi serupa telah banyak dipakai dimana-mana, untuk memberikan hanya kepingan kecil dari pengetahuan yang diperlukan. Ucapan hanyalah gabungan aksara dan melodia; dan penjiwaan sang penutur belum tentu meresap dengan baik ke dalam sebuah ucapan untuk bisa direguk tetesnya oleh pendengar. Dibutuhkan sebuah pengalaman langsung, pengalaman yang mampu mewarnai sebuah jiwa layaknya cat mewarnai kanvas. Dan filosofi serupa lah, yang dapat digunakan sebagai alasan utama untuk merantau, berkelana, mendatangi tempat baru, apapun itu namanya.
Di bawah ada salinan sebuah tulisan yang saya kutip dari sini. Ada baiknya sedikit dibaca dan direnungkan untuk permulaan.
"WHY YOU SHOULD TRAVEL YOUNG"Hidup manusia, terkadang dihiasi dengan alasan. Suatu hal yang bisa menjelaskan asal mula sebuah kejadian, tetapi sering juga digunakan sebagai pembenaran sebuah tindakan.
Posted by Jeff Goins (Google+) on Tuesday, June 26, 2012
As I write this, I’m flying. It’s an incredible concept: to be suspended in the air, moving at two hundred miles an hour — while I read a magazine. Amazing, isn’t it?
I woke up at three a.m. this morning. Long before the sun rose, thirty people loaded up three conversion vans and drove two hours to the San Juan airport. Our trip was finished. It was time to go home. But we were changed.
As I sit, waiting for the flight attendant to bring my ginger ale, I’m left wondering why I travel at all. The other night, I was reminded why I do it — why I believe this discipline of travel is worth all the hassle.
I was leading a missions trip in Puerto Rico. After a day of work, as we were driving back to the church where we were staying, one of the young women brought up a question.
“Do you think I should go to graduate school or move to Africa?”
I don’t think she was talking to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. But that didn’t stop me from offering my opinion.
I told her to travel. Hands down. No excuses. Just go.
She sighed, nodding. “Yeah, but…”
I had heard this excuse before, and I didn’t buy it. I knew the “yeah-but” intimately. I had uttered it many times before. The words seem innocuous enough, but are actually quite fatal.
Yeah, but …
… what about debt?
…
… what about my job?
… what about my boyfriend?
This phrase is lethal. It makes it sound like we have the best of intentions, when really we are just too scared to do what we should. It allows us to be cowards while sounding noble.
Most people I know who waited to travel the world never did it. Conversely, plenty of people who waited for grad school or a steady job still did those things after they traveled.
It reminded me of Dr. Eisenhautz and the men’s locker room.
Dr. Eisenhautz was a German professor at my college. I didn’t study German, but I was a foreign language student so we knew each other. This explains why he felt the need to strike up a conversation with me at six o’clock one morning.
I was about to start working out, and he had just finished. We were both getting dressed in the locker room. It was, to say the least, a little awkward — two grown men shooting the breeze while taking off their clothes.
“You come here often?” he asked. I could have laughed.
“Um, yeah, I guess,” I said, still wiping the crusted pieces of whatever out of my eyes.
“That’s great,” he said. “Just great.”
I nodded, not really paying attention. He had already had his adrenaline shot; I was still waiting for mine. I somehow uttered that a friend and I had been coming to the gym for a few weeks now, about three times a week.
“Great,” Dr. Eisenhautz repeated. He paused as if to reflect on what he would say next. Then, he just blurted it out. The most profound thing I had heard in my life.
“The habits you form here will be with you for the rest of your life.”
My head jerked up, my eyes got big, and I stared at him, letting the words soak into my half-conscious mind. He nodded, said a gruff goodbye, and left. I was dumbfounded.
The words reverberated in my mind for the rest of the day. Years later, they still haunt me. It’s true — the habits you form early in life will, most likely, be with you for the rest of your existence.
I have seen this fact proven repeatedly. My friends who drank a lot in college drink in larger quantities today. Back then, we called it “partying.” Now, it has a less glamorous name: alcoholism. There are other examples. The guys and girls who slept around back then now have babies and unfaithful marriages. Those with no ambition then are still working the same dead end jobs.
“We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle once said. While I don’t want to sound all gloom-and-doom, and I believe your life can turn around at any moment, there is an important lesson here: life is a result of intentional habits. So I decided to do the things that were most important to me first, not last.
After graduating college, I joined a band and traveled across North America for nine months. With six of my peers, I performed at schools, churches, and prisons. We even spent a month in Taiwan on our overseas tour. (We were huge in Taiwan.)
As part of our low-cost travel budget, we usually stayed in people’s homes. Over dinner or in conversation later in the evening, it would almost always come up — the statement I dreaded. As we were conversing about life on the road — the challenges of long days, being cooped up in a van, and always being on the move — some well-intentioned adult would say, “It’s great that you’re doing this … while you’re still young.”
Ouch. Those last words — while you’re still young — stung like a squirt of lemon juice in the eye (a sensation with which I am well acquainted). They reeked of vicarious longing and mid-life regret. I hated hearing that phrase.
I wanted to shout back,
“No, this is NOT great while I’m still young! It’s great for the rest of my life! You don’t understand. This is not just a thing I’m doing to kill time. This is my calling! My life! I don’t want what you have. I will always be an adventurer.”
In a year, I will turn thirty. Now I realize how wrong I was. Regardless of the intent of those words, there was wisdom in them.
As we get older, life can just sort of happen to us. Whatever we end up doing, we often end up with more responsibilities, more burdens, more obligations. This is not always bad. In fact, in many cases it is really good. It means you’re influencing people, leaving a legacy.
Youth is a time of total empowerment. You get to do what you want. As you mature and gain new responsibilities, you have to be very intentional about making sure you don’t lose sight of what’s important. The best way to do that is to make investments in your life so that you can have an effect on who you are in your later years.
I did this by traveling. Not for the sake of being a tourist, but to discover the beauty of life — to remember that I am not complete.
There is nothing like riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge or seeing the Coliseum at sunset. I wish I could paint a picture for you of how incredible the Guatemalan mountains are or what a rush it is to appear on Italian TV. Even the amazing photographs I have of Niagara Falls and the American Midwest countryside do not do these experiences justice. I can’t tell you how beautiful southern Spain is from the vantage point of a train; you have to experience it yourself. The only way you can relate is by seeing them.
While you’re young, you should travel. You should take the time to see the world and taste the fullness of life. Spend an afternoon sitting in front of the Michelangelo. Walk the streets of Paris. Climb Kilimanjaro. Hike the Appalachian trail. See the Great Wall of China. Get your heart broken by the “killing fields” of Cambodia. Swim through the Great Barrier Reef. These are the moments that define the rest of your life; they’re the experiences that stick with you forever.
Traveling will change you like little else can. It will put you in places that will force you to care for issues that are bigger than you. You will begin to understand that the world is both very large and very small. You will have a newfound respect for pain and suffering, having seen that two-thirds of humanity struggle to simply get a meal each day.
While you’re still young, get cultured. Get to know the world and the magnificent people that fill it. The world is a stunning place, full of outstanding works of art. See it.
You won’t always be young. And life won’t always be just about you. So travel, young person. Experience the world for all it’s worth. Become a person of culture, adventure, and compassion. While you still can.
Do not squander this time. You will never have it again. You have a crucial opportunity to invest in the next season of your life now. Whatever you sow, you will eventually reap. The habits you form in this season will stick with you for the rest of your life. So choose those habits wisely.
And if you’re not as young as you’d like (few of us are), travel anyway. It may not be easy or practical, but it’s worth it. Traveling allows you to feel more connected to your fellow human beings in a deep and lasting way, like little else can. In other words, it makes you more human.
That’s what it did for me, anyway.
Alasan sering digunakan untuk membentengi ketakutan, sayangnya ketakutan yang dibentengi tak selalu relevan. Entah ketakutan akan kesalahan yang akan terbongkar, atau ketakutan akan sesuatu yang tak bisa ia bongkar. Sebagian mengakui kesalahannya, sebagian berusaha membongkar ketidaktahuannya, tetapi sebagian besar memilih untuk duduk diam dan tak melakuakn apapun. Dan lagi-lagi, mereka membentengi keadaan mereka yang pasif itu, dengan tameng-tameng alasan lainnya.
Bongkarlah segala ketidaktahuan, buang segala macam tameng alasan. Jelajahilah dunia, belajarlah yang banyak dari sana, dan—siapa tahu—kau perlahan akan bertambah bijak dalam menyikapi kehidupan. Mengenali budaya yang berbeda, pola pikir yang berbeda, idealisme yang berbeda, preferensi yang berbeda, gaya hidup yang berbeda, semua itu akan menanamkan pemahaman akan sebuah dunia yang luas, dengan segala macam keberagaman dan perbedaan di atasnya.
"Hai manusia, sesungguhnya Kami menciptakan kamu dari seorang laki-laki dan seorang perempuan dan menjadikan kamu berbangsa-bangsa dan bersuku-suku, supaya kamu saling mengenal."Paling tidak, itulah yang berhasil saya dapatkan sebagai sebuah jawaban ketika mencari secercah pemahaman mengenai tujuan seseorang merantau, jauh dari apapun yang biasa ia kenal. Seperti kata pepatah, tanpa ada pengorbanan, tak akan ada yang didapat. Kata-kata saya ini mungkin sudah begitu banyak dituturkan dimana-mana, dalam berbagai gaya bahasa dan tutur kata, sehingga wajar jika kalian merasa kata-katanya sedikit familiar. Tetapi, semoga kalian, terutama yang belum, berkesempatan untuk mengamati dunia dan membentuk pemahaman dalam menyikapi keberagaman dan perbedaan, alih-alih mengubah nilai-nilai yang selama ini telah tertanam dalam jiwa.
Untuk penutup, akan saya sertakan penggalan syair terkenal berikut.
(:g)Orang pandai dan beradab tidak akan diam di kampung halaman
Tinggalkan negerimu dan merantaulah ke negeri orang
Merantaulah, kau akan dapatkan pengganti dari kerabat dan kawan
Berlelah-lelahlah, manisnya hidup terasa setelah lelah berjuang
Aku melihat air yang diam menjadi rusak karena diam tertahan
Jika mengalir menjadi jernih jika tidak kan keruh menggenang
Singa tak akan pernah memangsa jika tak tinggalkan sarang
Anak panah jika tidak tinggalkan busur tak akan kena sasaran
Jika saja matahari di orbitnya tidak bergerak dan terus diam
Tentu manusia bosan padanya dan enggan memandang
Rembulan jika terus-menerus purnama sepanjang zaman
Orang-orang tidak akan menunggu saat munculnya datang
Bijih emas bagaikan tanah biasa sebelum digali dari tambang
Setelah diolah dan ditambang manusia ramai memperebutkan
Kayu gaharu tak ubahnya seperti kayu biasa jika di dalam hutan
Jika dibawa ke bandar berubah mahal jadi perhatian hartawan.
(penggalan syair dari sang cendekiawan Islam terkenal dari masa kejayaan dinasti Abbasiyah, Muhammad bin Idris Asy-Syafi’i atau Imam Syafi'i (767-820 M/150-204 H)
Silakan kunjungi juga bagian kedua dan ketiga.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar