Essay #5: Molar of Wisdom

How did the wisdom tooth gain its name? It is simply the last molar teeth to grow, which usually starts surfacing in humans ranging from 15 to 25 years old. The definition of wisdom itself, as how the popular Merriam-Webster Dictionary online platform defines, is “knowledge that is gained by having many experiences in life.” It is very likely, then, that the term wisdom tooth came from the fact that wisdom is often associated with how long one has lived. This wisdom tooth, the last one to come out, then marks that the said person has been old enough to be of any wisdom. However, linking wisdom strictly to age is never a wise thing to do. One might find from a pure child, wisdom as stunning as that an old philosopher can give, different however in form and flavor. Therefore, wisdom is simply the ability to be correct in a given situation, ignoring the fact of how long one has lived, ignoring how much experience one has had, and even ignoring how the correctness is grounded.

Children are often regarded as inexperienced, small people who have not learnt anything yet and are always “too green to be of any real good.” However, unlike most adults, children have not been exposed to the dark, negative, corrupt side of the world yet.  They think in simple terms and talk with blatantly direct words, the ones that can be very difficult to prove wrong. When asked to point out what is wrong with apartheid, for example, a scholar might write a hundred pages on the definition, implication, and the society’s respond to apartheid complete with research and survey data. When a child is asked the same question, however, a simple answer comes out, “No fair you do this because you’re this color and you do that because you’re that color. No fair.” Was the child’s respond wrong? The answer might be infinitely shorter than that of the scholar’s, but it cut to the chase. It says more about what the question is about than the hundred page report, and it is true. This is a child’s wisdom, the wisdom of directness and pureness.

The vague definition of being “correct” might be difficult to digest in, but in most situations, whether an action is “right” or “wrong” can be distinguished by how the result of that action happens. To be able to see what is best over the current situation, to see the result of a deed before it is done, is the heart of any wisdom. Often this will require experience and the lessons learnt from mistakes, but nothing limits wisdom to them.

Wisdom, therefore, does not limit its definition to older people. While it is true that older people has much more time to gain more knowledge, do more thinking, experienced more mistakes, the pureness of a child can often yield wisdom no adult can object to. Wisdom is simply being correct, and being wise is the ability to be consistent of it.

Essay #3: An Important Friend

Mary Brown Parlee in her article “The Friendship Bond” reported the results of a research conducted on the readers of a certain magazine on the matters of friendship. She reported that most of the respondents agree that trust, honesty, support and understanding, confiding, and helping each other are the most important matters involving friends. This easily shows that many different people similarly treasure friendship in their life. Distinguishing whether a person is a dear friend or “just another friend”, however, is a difficult feat, but friendship is always an important element in anyone’s life.

The boundaries between “best friend”, “friend”, and “not friend” are never clear, but it always exists. In fact, I believe that it is a continuous spectrum, and the actual borders of level of friendship are dependent on the person perceiving the relationship. The boundaries are even also varying as time passes and people’s minds change. One can call anyone he or she knows a friend while another can claim to have no friends at all, only a lot of acquaintances. However, in general we can identify the level of friendship someone is having. 

Among the seven billion people in this world, most of which we would not know at all, we would have to select a few special people which we can entrust something on. It would be an absolutely pointless effort to, say, select a random person and ask him or her to keep our crime a secret. Therefore, one good parameter of friendship is the level of trust. Only a good friend can be trusted with an important information or task. The friend’s response, whether that friend betrays that trust or not is a very crucial matter that will decide between he or she is a friend or not.

Another parameter which we can use to measure the quality of friendship is how casual one is acting around his or her friends. Less close friends tend to be very polite, perhaps because they are seeking acceptance and afraid of losing it. However, a close friend will dare to go into his or her friend’s room and wreak havoc in it without even asking, and only good friends can badmouth and hit each other without anyone actually getting angry. Best friends can usually take acceptance for granted and may start to act stupid and childish. In other words, the more casual a friend is acting, the more she or he accepts us as a friend.

Friendship is something brittle and precious, much alike a glass ornament. Indeed, it is an ornament in the sense of decorating one’s life. One can live a life without a friend, but the life will be empty, colorless, if not dark, lacking of beauty. Lack of friendship is not by any means lethal, but friendship fills the life like no other can do, thus making it unique and precious. However, as beautiful it is, friendship is also fragile; it is easily broken by betrayal and egoistical actions. I myself have hard time making friends, and I also realize that this is partly caused by the “brittle” trait of friendship; I don’t understand how to make friends, and I am afraid of making ones that I never actually trust. Therefore I act with pretense, thinking that it is difficult, if even possible, to make an ideally good friend that will never leave however wrong my deeds are. Friendship is precious for life, but only an ideal friendship can last a lifetime.

The quality of a friendship is greatly determined by the opinions of the person perceiving the friendship itself, thus rendering the concept itself difficult to measure. The boundaries defining who is a friend and who is not are also never clearly decided, but it is the ultimate truth that friendship is very important in life. Preferring quality over quantity, I would like to invite all of us to make good friends, good enough to outmatch other hundreds of friends. Let us be good friends! 

Essay #4: Overly Courteous

I remember the day I attended the opening ceremony of a new semester as a university freshman. Everyone around was busy making friends with many people they had just met, the people that they would be studying together with for the next few years. Each time they exchanged names, they shook hands and smiled to each other. Those were all good and courteous introductions, but I felt as if something was strange: the first time I made friends during preschool, I do not remember asking a stranger their name while shaking hands. In fact, I cannot recall clearly how we made friends, and somehow everyone was already in good terms with each other. If children can be friends that easily, I thought to myself, why would we need to act very courteous to each other? I see that while courtesy grew from the demand of the society, it can also hinder budding friendship and create relationship wall among people.

The existence of courteous actions comes from the fact that people we mostly meet in society are people that we do not know. However, we have to act in such a way so that we do not initiate any conflict and so that we will be able to please others. In order to accomplish this, a set of rules of society is established so that people can refer to these rules when in doubt of what is generally considered a good or courteous action and what is not. In some culture, it is important to show courtesy to someone who lent us a car by filling the car with fuel before returning it. This is an unwritten rule that is expected of everyone, and indeed most people will agree that this is an act of courtesy because it relieves the car owner of the need to refill his car’s tank. However, whether the deed itself is actually courteous or not ultimately depends on each person’s perspective. The car owner, an odd one perhaps, might complain that the fuel used to fill his car’s tank does not fulfill his standards and feel offended because we might have damaged his car! Therefore, rules of courtesy are important, but they are not everything when it comes to relationships.

How we interact with others has a great impact on what they think we think of them. If we start calling someone using the title “Mr.”, thinking that it is generally more polite to do so, he will probably think that we respect him and we think of him as someone that possesses a higher social status so that it is more difficult for us to approach him. That in turn will make him try to approach us instead, but still without dissolving the vertical relationship, which makes the relationship somewhat rigid. Human relationships can be this complicated, but simply put, if we start acting very courteous to someone, he or she will recognize that we do not open ourselves to a close friendship with him or her.

Acting based solely on courtesy is equivalent to building a relationship wall between us and other people, because whenever we interact with others, we are acting as “a courteous member of society”, not as who we actually are. This courteous persona then stands in as a bridge, or rather, a wall between our real character and the people we are interacting with. There was a custom in my previous high school where all students were expected to greet a teacher briefly whenever they met one. We had this courteous habit for 3 years. Whenever we see a teacher while passing by the faculty office, in the corridors, or in the restrooms, the first thing that came to mind is always to greet “good morning” or “good afternoon”. When we received something from a teacher, it would be a “thank you”. However, the excessive usage of those words made me wonder if we were actually meaning what we are saying. Those greetings were often said with uninterested face, showing that the act of greeting was solely done out of obligation, not out of good will. Acting courteous as what the society demands, it seems, is equivalent to wearing a mask. It is a mask that provides convenience, but repels true connection with other people, a lonely mask with a smiling face on it.

The act of good manner and courtesy appears out of the need of good relationship between members of society. However, the excessive usage and overly rigid implementation of courtesy rules will bring out the contrary: they loosen relationships and create distance between people. Therefore we should be able to freely choose when to act courteous and understand the real reason within those actions so that we will not be trapped in the grand play called “social life”. Last but not least, I would like to quote a line from a song by Achmad Albar: “Mengapa kita bersandiwara?”, “Why do we pretend?”

Essay #2: The Matters of Heart

"As It Was in the Beginning", a story by E. Pauline Johnson tells the tale of Esther, a Redskin Indian girl who was taken in and raised by a Church missionary, Father Paul. Lawrence, her childhood companion and Father Paul's adopted son, one day proposed to her. She was very happy, but only until she overheard Father Paul's rejection of the idea, saying that her bloodline was of a poor quality. Driven by disappointment, confusion, and anger, Esther killed Lawrence and fled the house to her mother and father's settlement. This shows Esther’s darker side of love which led her to do that what true love does not. Killing is an unacceptable deed, especially if it is done in the name of love.

From my point of view, Esther's killing Lawrence is a deed which cannot be agreed with. Rather than love, her actions after she overheard Lawrence and Father Paul's conversation are driven by anger and hatred. Morally, any kind of intentional murder, for whatever reason, cannot be accepted. Over her betrayed feelings, Esther should remember that she was always indebted to Father Paul and Lawrence who took her in, gave her food, and taught her many things so that she could become what she was. She should have contained her feelings and then try to talk with Lawrence before leaving for home. Perhaps, her violent actions did reflect that she was a "caged beast waiting to kill" as Father Paul described her. If she did not react in that way, she might actually prove the description wrong, convincing Father Paul that she was not a beast and so were her people.

Everyone has a right to live and thus no one is allowed to take those rightful lives. For Esther, "love" might be the reason to kill, but in her angered state of mind, her love for Lawrence turned into extreme adoration that leads to egoistic thoughts. She did not want Lawrence to be taken by another girl. She wanted to hurt Father Paul by taking away his beloved one. All this cannot be called "love"; they are simply egoistical thoughts based on excessive possessiveness. True love values life and cherishes happiness, and so true love can never drive anyone to kill. 

Although sacrificing oneself is usually held as a sign of deep love, suicide is not a way to show love. For example, a single mother during a great famine might desperately sacrifice herself, going to a dangerous work in the battlefield with very little chance of surviving, just to feed her children decent food. Then, she was killed in the process and her children never saw her again. Another desperate mother might even decide to kill herself together with her children to relieve herself from the ordeal called life. Some might call these deeds "love", but I believe that they are not love at all. If the mother sacrificed herself so the children can live, the children will live without her mother, without her love when they needed it. When the other mother committed suicide together with her children, I see that as the result of hopelessness and a twisted way to look at death: as a way out of problem, which it never is. A true loving mother will ideally keep on struggling so that everyone can live past the ordeal times, because she realizes that being able to live together is actually the biggest love a she can give to her children.

An inspirational form of love can be seen from Mother Teresa, a globally known figure who devoted her life to the poor people. She gave them everything she had: her strength, time, attention, and compassion, but without any intention to sacrifice her own happiness. Although her material wealth is close to none, much like those she loved, she had a principle that anyone that came to her have to leave in a better state no matter what she can do for them. Until her time of death because of leprosy, she had no intention to die because of her helping people. She simply left because she had to, because the Lord was calling for her. In the end, I believe that this is the true form of altruistic love.

To wrap it all up, I would like to point out that “love” itself is a very abstract concept that might be different in definition from person to person. However, I personally believe that “love” should be an ideal concept that contains all the good, positive, and innocent things. Therefore killing, which is a grave sin by itself, cannot in any way be related to the true love I believe in. In the end, love is good and it should stay good so that people can love and know that they are following the ideal path in their life.

Essay #1: The Birth Order

The birth order, or rather the position of a child in a nuclear family apparently plays a significant role in shaping the child’s behavior and personality when he or she interacts with other members of society. This interesting idea has been brought up by L. K. Forer in her short piece of writing. She starts her point by explaining the importance of parent-child communication and built the outline of the behaviors of first, middle, last, and only child from there with sound logic and reasoning. Although she did not give concrete examples in her writing, her description of a child’s personality is generally accurate and backed up with logical reasons. 

I believe that Forer intended to elaborate children and families in general, not limited to certain cultures or lifestyles, and I think that she succeeded in doing so. First of all, she divided the “classes” of children into three: first child, later children, and only child with later children being further divided into middle children and the youngest or last children. As opposed to typical families in the US that are composed of parents and two children, this classification allows families with more than two children or families with only one child to  fit in the discussion. Furthermore, the lack of concrete examples and the use of general descriptions of actions (e.g. “care for”, “imitate”, “struggle”, etc.) make the description suitable to any families regardless of how do they actually do things. For example, to “take care of myself” can mean “to be able to earn money by working” in one country, while it might be interpreted as “to be able to fend off wild animals and find food” in another.

My family consists of my father, mother, my older sister and me; therefore making my sister the oldest sibling and me the youngest. Our behaviors are also partly well-described by Forer. For example, as the youngest sibling I rely on older people in a lot of occasions, and I thus developed an easy-going personality as I thought that very few things can 'go wrong', and even when they do, I will be able to get help somehow. Now that both of us are living in Bandung away from our parents, my sister takes care of me instead. From time to time she would ask me whether I am healthy or remind me to not of things I forgot. In this sense, she is already acting very parental. With a few exceptions on our own unique personalities, I can conclude that Forer's reasoning is well-thought enough it applies even to my family. 

Another possible explanation for the differences in children behavior in a family is how well a father or a mother treats a child of a certain gender in comparison to another. A parent generally develops favoritism to a child of opposing gender; a mother who is the youngest sister as a child might show more fondness to her oldest son and in a similar way, a father who is the oldest son as a child is likely to be more attentive to his youngest daughter. This is particularly true in my family because as the youngest male sibling, I tend to receive more of my mother's attention than my older sister. In a lot of situations, I found myself being praised by mother for something minor (e.g. saying my skeptical opinion on a matter) while my sister will tend to receive neutral response. Although my personality crashes a lot with my mother leading to our constant debating over many silly things, the same amount of attention is not directed towards my sister. 

Different treatments will lead to different developments in the child’s personality, especially how he or she views and positions himself or herself when interacting with the other siblings, or later in life, with friends and acquaintances. The favorite child tends to rely on the parent while the unfavorited, albeit a bit jealous, will sooner become independent but with lower self-esteem.

Of course, there are still many other possible factors: the neighborhood the child grew in, or the age gap between two siblings, etc. How heavily these factors affect a child will differ from family to family and will need more exploring. In conclusion, different children behaviors is caused by the parents’ treating them differently. While the birth order plays a major role in defining the position of a child in a family and how his or her develop personality,one of the other possible factor is a parent’s favoritism towards a child of certain gender.

First things first

Good day and welcome, dear readers! This is a blog created mainly for posting essays written for the English Academic Writing course in Bandung Institute of Technology, which I attend weekly. New posts will--or rather, should--appear biweekly. Thanks for visiting this random blog, and please have a good time reading~