The Greatest Gifts. Reflections on Idul Fitri from Jakarta, Indonesia
June 5, 2019
Standing on a whale fishing for minnows
-Polynesian saying
I sat on the couch in my wife’s family house in a Muslim neighborhood in inner-city Jakarta. The only white guy around for miles far as I knew.
Neighbors would come and go saying a greeting while passing small envelopes to the children as they left. This is the tradition for Idul Fitri along with eating beef rendang and sticky rice cooked in leaves folded up like a box and then steamed, a holiday specialty called ketupat.
Inside the envelopes would be IDR2,000 (15 cents) or IDR10,000 (70 cents) or if they are lucky and the family is relatively wealthy IDR100,000 ($7). Whatever the contents the kids would walk away excited, happy, and smiling. They’d continue this trick-or-treat-style house visit around the whole neighborhood all morning racking up as much loot as they could!
Later they would flood the local Indomaret down the street and buy sweets and chocolates and all kinds of goodies found in the local convenience store.
This got me to thinking.
In the USA, I know many families that spend thousands of dollars to give their kids the latest gadgets, iPhones, game machines, or expensive bicycles at Christmas. The kids play with them for a minute, temporarily happy, and then promptly forget about the gifts and move on to whatever is next.
We all love gifts. We all love things. Everyone loves stuff. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But those things are transient.
Happiness is fleeting and ephemeral. There is always want and desire for more. The next big thing. The next cool trendy thing. The next thing the other person has but you don’t.
Many of us spend our lives chasing happiness and we somehow think things and more stuff are what makes us happy. While that may be true it is also quick to fade. The dopamine wears off and we need another shot to achieve that same feeling of happiness we found in the unopened mysterious package.
I think we’re treading down the wrong path by solely seeking happiness as life’s fulfillment. There ought to be something more. Something long-lasting. Something that’s harder to achieve but has a more enduring impact on our lives.
We’re told by advertising in our hyper-consumer-oriented culture that we need things to be happy. The path to fulfillment is paved with more stuff!
We buy it. Then we see something else and we buy more. We don’t just buy the things and the stuff, we wholeheartedly buy the message.
We spend our entire lives working jobs we hate to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. (Tyler Durden)
We think this is happiness. We’re taught, told, and sold that these transactions will make us happy. We’re immersed in it. The advertising is relentless. Inescapable.
We trade our time for money. We use the money to buy and accumulate stuff, stuff, and more stuff!
Although time and money can be traded they are not the same currency. Time is limited. None of us know how much time we have. It’s finite. We now live in an era when things are plentiful and abundant. Even here in Indonesia in the poorest of neighborhoods, there are plenty of things. There is a lot of stuff!
We can get more things. We can buy more stuff.
We cannot buy more time. Time is a non-renewable resource.
Why do we always seem to forget this simple truism?
Do we somehow think that maximizing the amount of stuff we have will increase and maximize our happiness? Or is there more to it than that?
I think what we truly want is not more stuff but rather to live a life full of rich, diverse, and meaningful experiences. I think what we really crave is meaning. And meaning is achieved in at least a couple of ways I know of; through seeking journeys and adventures and by becoming part of and contributing to something larger than ourselves.
So how do we do it?
Most people think of grand and glorious escapades and wait a lifetime to go out and seek their own personal adventures. But they can be simple and local.
You can ride your bike to the edge of town and sleep on the ground. You can try new weird food. You can sit on the curb with a homeless person and have a chat.
You can seek out other cultures, other ethnicities, and foreign languages.
Visit a mosque, a church, a temple, a synagogue, or a community center in a place you wouldn’t normally go and meet the people you are usually afraid of. The results might surprise you.
More often than not, I am the only white guy around for miles. I sit in unfamiliar places and situations all the time. My life is an adventure. At times it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s not fun but it’s always something new and an opportunity to learn. It’s an adventure and the journey I am on.
I chose it. I choose it.
You also have that choice.
Alongside journeys and adventures, we also want to feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We crave a sense of community and whether that manifests as becoming a member of a religious group, a book club, a bar scene, a paleo-diet cross-training crowd, or an inner-city gang member, the end result is the same: we feel like we belong.
We can also achieve this sense of being a part of something bigger by dedicating some of our time in service to others. Get involved with a community that has a habit of giving. Especially giving our time to sit, listen, understand and connect.
Passion is the result of action, not the cause of it
Or we could write an essay like this trying to understand the world around us and our place in it and send that article out into the world for others to read with the hopes it might reach someone and get them to thinking too. We all have something to give and contribute.
The two greatest gifts we’ve been given are the gifts of choice and time.
We have time here on this planet alongside 8 billion other souls and we have the choice of what to do with that time.
We are all standing on the whale of choice and time while fishing for the minnows of things and stuff to make us happy.
With my belly full of rendang and all the neighbors coming and going I couldn’t help but think this is the place I ought to be.
I am here with my wife and daughter surrounded by a community of Muslims that don’t know me or where I am from and most likely don’t know my name but they have welcomed me into their community with smiles, handshakes, and respectful bows of the head on their most special and holiest of days.
We all want to connect. We all want to feel good about ourselves. We all want to live a full, rich and meaningful life. This is my secret. I know this. This is how I connect with people across language barriers, cultures, and religions.
This makes me happy. This gives me meaning and makes me feel fulfilled.
And this got me to thinking.
As far as I can see the best way to find happiness, fulfillment and meaning are: CHOOSE ADVENTURE. CHOOSE TIME.
