I went to an Islamic high school, a part of the State Islamic education system in Bandung. Yet, I never really get close to what it is to be a Santri. It felt like a fever dream, I’m a stranger in a strange land. There were class courses that I didn’t get from the regular State School system. Those are Islamic History, Qur’an and Hadith, Aqidah and Akhlak, Fiqih, and Arabic language. Those were the courses I enjoy the least, simply because I wasn’t familiar with the lessons. In my persona as an Islamic state school student, though, I have to endure and forcibly enjoy those courses.
My classmates were all students of Islamic schools for some time. The system had a kind of protectionist policy, the students were encouraged to continue their studies in the school system. If you’re from an Islamic primary school, then you’re more likely to be accepted to Islamic middle schools, then to Islamic high schools, then to Islamic university. My classmates were excellent in those Islamic courses. They read the Quran regularly, recite them beautifully, and are knowledgeable in the history of Islam. They were what Anwar Ibrahim called Generasi Madani. Or so I thought.
One thing high school taught me, which I didn’t realize until now, is the privilege of being a teacher’s son. It can get you away from trouble.
My high school bully was a teacher’s son. He was a genius. He belonged to the school system since the primary. Therefore, he’s well-acquaintanced with everything in the school: the courses, the teachers, and even all the hidden knowledge that didn’t have a place in the curriculum. He was everything I was not, and he knew it. He would buy things from fellow students who came to class selling stuff, and gave them big money so he could just get away without paying. He would harass the class chief, saying they were incompetent and fools. He got away with most of the things he did.
I myself was a teacher’s son back in middle school. My mom was (and still is) the school counselor. Yet, I didn’t feel like capitalizing it, even less to brag about it. I’m too nerd and too ugly to be one, so my friends said about me.
Being a teacher’s son, for me, was a pain in the butt. I was expected to be everything a good student should be: intelligent, sociable, dress up neatly, passionate about the arts and the crafts, a good Indonesian citizen, disciplined, well-read, well-behaved, well done, good job, congratulations! The identity of “Bu A***’s son”, instead of being an armor that can deflect all attacks on me, turned out to be a holographic bullseye that would direct all expectations to me. I am not seen as a whole individual. I was defined as what my mom was.
This August, I’m turning 23. I graduated from a respectable university last year, bringing home an English Education degree (but not enough to be a certified professional teacher).
Being a graduate of Education degree, I was projected to be a teacher at some point in my life. An occupation I loved, though I despised the most. A teacher, as Javanese people said, is a figure to be ‘obeyed and modeled after’ (guru: digugu lan ditiru). A teacher would, and should, emulate the best quality of a person that would also be emulated by the kids, or the students. In that case, If I were to be a teacher, I would fall into what I called ‘a life of pretense’. I can’t be a good example for the kids, or so I thought. I never feel like I’m a good person, a good model figure.
This month, I resigned from an English course institution, paid enough for a daily dose of coffee, after serving for 10 months. Suddenly, I am nobody’s son anymore. I’m on my own, unemployed, and looking for a job. I lost the identity that clings to another person, which is liberating. I lost the identity of a degree or an occupation that I am not. I am taking responsibility for my own.
In her writings, Rebecca Solnit often wrote as if she were wandering in the wild. As if she’s driving through a winding road, no certain direction but to take you through the journey. She took her writings slowly, carefully, calmly. At the end of the last sentence, we come to a conclusion, or perhaps discovery, of what this winding journey meant for us.
“Nobody likes you when you’re 23”, Mark Hoppus sang in his distinct voice. This is an age where nobody takes you seriously, even your parents. Yet, they would expect you to do things that show maturity and calmness. Your neighbor talks behind your back about how you look like an adult and yet behave like a moody teen. You’re smoking on your balcony, and the Sari Roti guy would think you’re a good-for-nothing young man. Your juniors in college think you’re a cool guy, and yet ask themselves why you are still around when people your age should be either married, get busy working, or get their Masters’s degree.
Breaking news on the TV: startups stop hiring new people. The headline on papers: your country is in a deep shit situation. Scroll the Insta: gen-Zs are depressed.
You’re everywhere and nowhere. You shouldn’t be here anymore, but you have nowhere to go. “Closing time, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” It bugs me that 23 is the age when I would feel like I am lost. I am lost. I am lost in thoughts. I shouldn’t be going back to the past, and yet the future seems so blurred and dark. Arnold van Gennep coined the term ‘liminality’, the ambiguity that occurs in between the two phases of status change in a ritualistic society. A person leaving behind their old identity, but not yet completed the ritual and inducted into the new status. The space in between.
I met an old friend from high school. He just graduated and met a lot of old friends. He then asked me and another common friend an overly simple question for an intricate answer: where are you going with your life? What would your future look like? How much did you go for it?
I was amazed that in this same phase of life, one would question themselves a common question. Back in early 2022, I asked the same thing to my colleagues. Their answers were very enlightening: most of them were still figuring it out.
Rebecca Solnit once wrote in her beautiful book “Leave the door for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” The unknown, she continued, are the things you need to find. To find them, you have to get lost. You became no one, shedding your identity, losing yourself, and then finding a new one. “The things we want are transformative… we don’t know what’s on the other side of that transformation.”
Sounds scary, no?
I sat in a local coffee shop near my parents’ home, late after midnight, when I came across this track by Semisonic. They were a one-hit wonder, so they said on the Spotify page. I don’t really listen to lyrics, but there are always things that would resonate with me, depending on the phase of life I’m in.
“Closing time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
…
Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Tonight, I am moving on.
