My Journey

My recent hobby is fitness, especially doing the Body Pump class (http://www.lesmills.com/site/programs/bodypump-group-fitness-program.aspx). This 60-minute workout challenges all the major muscle groups by using the best weight-room exercises like squats, presses, lifts and curls. It is a very effective program for a busy and lazy person like me

The workout focuses on the repetitions. The challenge is more on keep lifting my bar until the instructor say "Done" than on how many kilograms I can put on the bar. To put too light weights will benefit nothing because the muscle wouldn’t worked-out as expected while to put too heavy weights is certainly impossible. So the key is to put the optimal weights so it is heavy enough yet I can keep lifting the bar until the "Done".

The last counts, especially in the biceps part were always the hardest. It is always so hard to keep lifting my bar until the "Done" that the minutes always be such a special minutes during the whole class. And most of the time, the "Done" was coming shortly after I’ve given up. That’s why, lately I develop a "break the limit", "forget the pain" attitude, never-never give up, who knows the "Done" will come after this, after this, after this :)…

Well, the moments always give me quite deep insight, remind me to "never give up", the success could be the very next minutes after I dropped the bar.

A very inspirational film scene taught me the same thing.

It was the war between Orcs and Uruk-hais versus the Rohan, human cavalry clan in Rohan’s fortress, the Helm’s Deep in The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers.

I remembered clearly that the Rohan which are very far-outnumbered by the Orcs / Uruk-hais keep fighting to protect their already broken-down fortress. The war kept continuing even over night while the Rohan  army’s number kept decreasing very fast.

Never give up, even until the last drop of the blood.

Then suddenly with the first sun shine, came the bigger parts of Rohans led by the white wizard Gandalf which change the situation quite fast that at the end led to Rohan’s victory. I almost gave a standing-ovation back then

Never give up; success can be in the very next minutes…

I think that my first time knowing Paulo Coelho (www.paulocoelho.com) has been one of my life’s milestones.

It has changed my opinion about novels, which I considered as my last book of choice due to my uncertainty of their values for me. But Coelhos’ novels have given me so much insights of life that are very valuable for my life. And they have brought back my reading hobby once more.

Problems arose lately when I have read all Indonesian version of Coelho and quite reluctant to buy the English version due to the price :). It’s been quite a hard time for me to get books with the same values level.

Anyway, lately the story of Wayang: Mahabharata and Ramayana epics have been my obsession. Starting with some flashback from my children age that I have written in my previous blog "neither pure good nor pure evil", since then I have read many more Wayang books to get more enrichments. One of them was the books called "Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese", a book about Javanese philosophy, written by an American professor, Benedict R.O’G. Anderson. I am not a deep philosophy maniac who can read and understand deep Javanese philosophy books written by Javanese people. That’s why the book which only gives insights and general overview about many things is matched with my nature: want to know little things of many things that I can remember as insights to be considered, studied and remembered.

On reading my Wayang books, it has given me deeper and deeper insights about "neither pure good nor pure evil" as there is no such thing as one law fits all. Javanese people accepted it more as that each people have its’ own places in the community with different sets of rules, rights and duties. I’m not talking that I do not honor the declaration of independence and human rights that declare every human born with the same rights.

It’s just that after the born, the positions, duties and responsibilities in the community will sometimes bring sets of rules of determining good or evil.

• As in Pandavas who have to kill all of their own blood relatives, the Kouravas in Bharatayudha, yet that was considered a good deeds because as their position as Ksatriya, it were their duties to defend their honor (Kouravas were not a bad king for their people, so there were no such reason as to defend the people’s fate).
• As in Kresna, the most controversial role in Mahabharata. Having the God Visnu in his body; his acts should all be godly. Nevertheless, Bharatayudha has noted him, as if we use our standards now, the dirtiest and evil character as in he has broken almost all the available rules of honor for Pandavas’ victory. Yet he is remembered as good person since the evil and dirty tricks are all considered his unselfish acts, break his own honor for the sake of greater honor, Pandavas and the Devas.

And at that point, I can not help but remember a film that I have watched, the Kingdom of Heaven. It was a story with the background of holy war on Jerusalem. The story began with the European allied armies have taken victory and win the place in Jerusalem. The European alliance was actually very fragile because the honorable leader was dying of leprosy and there was no strong enough candidate to replace him.

Suddenly there was a young Baron, Balian (Orlando Broom) who proofed himself worthy for the leader position. But as he was very new, there was resistance from other Barons that have long fighting for the leader position. And at a determining night when the leader was about to die, the leader suggested Balian to take charge and do everything as necessary (including killing the other Barons if needed).

The film has illustrated Balian’s inner-fights quite well. Yet it has not changed my opinion that he was a selfish, coward man. He didn’t want to do the evil thing as to kill the other Barons and as the result, the allied armies suffered many-many loses, many-many soldiers’ life and lost the Jerusalem. He was selfish because he didn’t want to sacrifice his own "Good-Hero image" for the greater sake. He was coward because he was too scared of his evil doing will bring him punishment that he sacrificed the life of his armies.

Hmm, there will be definitely different endings if a person like Kresna was in his shoes :)…