De Futuro: le passé

*There will be two parts, the first one is past-oriented and the second one is present-condition oriented.

“The future is as much about the past as it is about the future.”

At some varying degree, this statement is indeed true because as we see today, history has repeated itself. It is undeniable that technology has evolved dramatically over the past 200 years (since the beginning of the industiral revolution) and yet, our psychology as human being hasn’t evolved dramatically over the past two-hundred years.

In the late 1910’s, Indonesia (or the Dutch East Indies) was hit by a pandemic and it is worth mentioning that the late 1910’s pandemic causing virus caused a disease almost similliar to COVID-19. The early response of the Dutch East Indies governement to this pandemic is -as expected- not so much different to the early response of the Indonesian governement towards the was emerging COVID-19. A response marked with misscommunication, unpreparedness, and most importantly underestimation, these characteristics are found both in the response of the Dutch East Indies and Indonesian governemt. For this reason I do believe that the past will eventually -although for most ot the not exatcly the same- repeats itself, even if it’s not an exact repetition, still it does rhymes.

With the past in mind, I am currently trying to map the future. Generally, I don’t usually mingle with pragmatical question such as “which university do I want to go into?” but I mingle with the more idealistic ones. I like to question myself about “idealically, what do I want?” and the answer to that question usually result to a kind of chracteristic to fulfill.

When I was younger or to be more exact, when I was in the 7^th grade I genuinely disliked my class. Back then, I didn’t feel that I fit into the class and most importantly I just disliked things which my once classmates did, one of which is smoking with paper (not cigaretes) in class. While that might be silly, when you are the class leader -which I once was in the 7^th grade- that is genuinely worrying.

To not make it case specific, due to some other things to many to be listed on this mini-essay, I concluded that I disliked the class and I felt the urge to find a better class that I won’t dislike. Turns out, the class that I was looking for was the “unggulan” class, a class where 30-ish top ranking students went. I studied hard to get there and eventually I did get into the class. With this condition, another question eventually arose, “what should I do next?”

I’ve reached the peak of a mountain, I’ve fulfilled my goal, and now what? What should I do next?. At that point I’ve lost my motivation for progress, I realized it eventually and it wasn’t the most pleasant experience To prevent this confusion, which I had for around two years, I’m commited to create a goal based on characterisic and not the individual material thing itself. So thus, I don’t pin-point my “university goal” but I create a series of characteristics for it. This process of making a criteria is undeniably confusing, but I guess I have to bear it and move along.