KEPOMPONG

WELCOME A NEW DAY!

The hustle and bustle of the traffic in a big city is the typical flavour of living in Jakarta. Traffic congestion is something that everybody has to deal with, especially during the rush hour. All the streets are all bogged down by the amount of traffic. The more people get used to it, the more impatient they became. As a consequence they wake up in the morning, with heads stuffed with expectation to deal with the traffic congestion. They dashed off to work as to be able to avoid the traffic.

The expectation then turns into reality. As people drive, they are then sucked up by the congestion and got burried in the graveyard of the traffic. In next to no time, they will get irritated and spit out curses if not four letter words. Car drivers blame the motorbikers, and so do the opposite. Pedestrians are not considered liable to use the street. If cursing is considered as a crime, then the statistic for crime in the traffic will probably recorded the highest rate.

I am no better than the rest of the people when it deals with traffic. With my negative expectation in my head, I get easlly irritated by the traffic. And, yes... I spit out curses. It has turned into such a habit that it has never come across my mind that I'm no better than those people that annoyed me. There were times that I tried to control myself but the intention almost immediately dispersed into the thin air.

This morning I tuned into a radio station, broadcasting the topic on happiness. "Happiness is about how you control yourself to see things. Happiness is not about the things itself, but happiness is about you. To speak the language of the common, happiness is not about the money that you put into the stockmarket, or about your fancy cars. Happiness is about how you perceive things around you. So YOU are the creator of happiness."

I sat silently behind the steering wheel. The words penetrated deep into my mind. It's not the traffic that irritates me, but it is how I perceive the traffic that irritates me. If I choose to cool off and not to follow the negative expectation that dwells in my head, things would probably end up far beyond getting irritated and depressed. I miss the YOU in me, my freedom to become myself.