Dawn

By Sashia Tjia

When the son of a highly prominent pastor Rick Warren, the author of best selling book, purpose driven life committed suicide in 2013 and seventeen months later as the world mourned the sudden unexpected death of the famous actor Robin williams who also followed the same full steps, the author once again was confronted with the meaning of one existence.

Why do people commit suicide?

In time of great sorrow, pain and despair, without hope, what is there left in life to cling to? Where can one go to find the light when everything seems getting darker and darker? Who would lead us and show us the way to go back in track? Who would give us the assurance that no matter how bad the circumstance is, that life still has meaning, Who would guarantee that all will ends well in the end as long as we dont give up and keep on trying?

Where can we go to find peace amidst predicament and uncertainties?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490758992

Sashia Tjia

Sashia Tjia earned her master of music degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She currently lives in Bandung and teaches piano.

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Copyright 2015 Sashia Tjia.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-5900-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-5899-2 (e)

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CONTENTS

What’s Next?

Part I

Pain

An Unquiet Mind

Fear

Finding Facts

Retribution

Shoe Box

Equilibrium

Ticktock

Nothing Lasts

Part II   2013

Mata Terang

Omen

Recapitulation

Sense And Sensibility

Part III   Trust

Survival Of The Fittest

Fairy Tales

Caution: It’s Hot!

The Art Of Driving

Indian Summer

Great Expectation

The Best Is Yet To Come

Justice

Hope

Faith

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

WHAT’S NEXT?

December 1996. It was a bitterly cold morning on that particular Thursday. I still remember it well as though it was only yesterday. I was on my way to room 507 to attend my very last class before the fall semester officially ended. There was a pang deep inside me as I pushed in the double door to enter the classroom. After four and a half years of a highly exciting ride pursuing an academic field in music, I had finally reached the very end of my college year. After this class, there would be no more deadlines or papers due waiting. No more exams or endless assignments to worry about. Soon I was about to face a completely different and unknown phase of my own life journey.

The temperature had continued to drop below freezing. I knew that heavy snow was about to fall anytime soon. After living four consecutive winters, I also knew what to expect inside the classroom during the coldest season of the year, either a superwarm chamber that made it kinda hard to breathe or a supercold one that had made me shivering so badly during my freshman and sophomore year.

As I entered the classroom, majority of the students were already in their seats, having a light chat with the professor, since he had moved our finals a week prior; hence, there was no more material to cover. He started the class with a sneak preview of what we were going to learn in the spring semester, the rest of the discussions ranging from the upcoming winter break all the way to the commencement just a few months away. Everybody was in a jolly mood. We were all looking forward to winter break. The cozy atmosphere didn’t last long, however. It all changed when the teacher abruptly diverted from Christmas break to something else that still resonated strongly seventeen years later.

Congratulations! You are a step closer toward graduation. Here is your diploma. Do you have any idea what you are planning to do next?

Some string players eagerly replied that they were seeking an audition for an orchestral job. The teacher went silent for a moment before he dropped the bomb that none of us wanted to hear.

Have you checked the paper? Have you found any opening lately?

Another agonizingly long moment of silence. I stole a quick glance outside the window. Sakura Park was already covered with snow, which had fallen heavily for hours the night before. It would have made a perfect snapshot of winter wonderland. Yet the beautiful view outside didn’t make me feel better. His remarks were similar to what one prominent singer pointed out during a master class at our school where she addressed the participants onstage pretty much the same question with a minor difference, a rather stingy conclusion to the answer of her own. Many singers had dreams of being part of leading opera houses such as the Met. She asked them back by asking what they were going to do if they didn’t make it, that not everyone belongs on the world stage. The singers didn’t know what to say. After a moment of silence, in attempt to break the ice, she reassured them that there would always be a job available somewhere for their future consideration to sustain the basics. Of all the master classes that I had seen, it is only that particular point that she picked up that still registers in the back of my head to this very day. Not the memorable insights of how to make music. But when she felt the need to give the finishing touch of her point, she stated mopping the floor as among the many other options on the list for survival. Ouch!

The professor didn’t go as far. Maybe he noticed the disappointment on the students’ faces so he dropped the subject immediately. However, the damage was already done. When he dismissed the class an hour later, majority of us left the classroom feeling as somber as the sky. Some walked toward the elevator, while a few others preferred the staircase, including me. We descended the steps in silence for a long while till my friend suddenly decided to speak.

"That was rather depressing, wasn’t it?

Tell me about it.

I only have six months of grace period before I have to start paying my student loans after the commencement. That’s like around five hundred dollars per month for the next twenty years of my life, paying debts. And that doesn’t include the apartment rent and food.

The rest of us didn’t know what would be the right thing to say to brighten up the air. We remained very quiet till we reached the lobby. We parted hastily, busy with our own thoughts and fear of the unknown. Everything that had to do with the future was momentarily becoming bleak all of a sudden.

I had been working at the financial aid and the bursar’s office part-time for three years. I knew for a fact that many of the American students at our school had to borrow money to pay their tuition, while I was among the few fortunate ones who were able to go to school for free against all the odds, considering I was far from supertalented or superbright. But I was still that blessed to be given the chance of a lifetime without having to borrow a penny. I wasn’t sure either what was ahead of me, apart from completing one final obligation before the spring semester started—the concerto requirement. After that, it’s indeed a huge question mark. Just like the professor said earlier, what is next? I didn’t have a green card. By law I must leave the United States after the commencement. And I know that I am no Lang Lang. I will never receive long lists of concert engagements worldwide to generate a monthly income to pay living expenses. All I had was a degree in music. Would that do? Would that be enough to survive the unknown?

Seventeen years have gone by since that particular morning. I couldn’t come up with an answer then, and I still do not have the answer now even though almost two decades have already passed since graduation. Looking back, what was next turned out to be the very things that I did not plan ahead of time. My path ended up being far from the conventional steps that majority of my high school friends took right after their college years, which was marriage. I ended up staying in the beloved city of New York a few years longer than I originally thought. Many wonderful things miraculously happened and continued to roll by itself like a stroke of repeating good luck. Life at that point was getting better and better. I couldn’t ask for more. How was that even possible? To think about it, the answer is very simple—because I was that damn lucky! Nothing more.

PART I

You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel.

—Johnny Depp

Pain

Unlike most traditional families I knew, I grew up watching Father do almost the entire a–z. Mom was not the early riser Father was. It was him who went to the market to buy veggies after he dropped us to school and returned home to open up the store. Mom never did the cleaning, only cooking daily meals and teaching the piano in the afternoon. In her spare time, she would sit idle for hours doing nothing and would remain calm all the time, unlike me. She was not particularly fond of books or TV. Ngalilieur sorangan, she would say. Gives you a headache. In the end, I followed her footsteps. I have stopped watching TV for almost a year now. Not because it gives me a headache but because it mostly gives me a heartache.

The very last article on the local paper that I read before we stopped subscribing, since father was too ill to read, was another heart-wrenching story of the extreme suffering of a widow in her early seventies who lived down below poverty line with her two sons, both born mentally retarded. She was so poor that she couldn’t even afford salt during her pregnancies, which caused severe malnutrition that damaged their brain. She supported her family by picking up dry branches in the woods to be sold in the nearby market for lighting up fire for cooking. Her community couldn’t afford to buy kerosene, let alone the standard gas to light the modern stove; they still used the traditional hearth, or tungku. Once in a while, her neighbor would spare some leftover. Her primary concern was only one thing: who will take care of her invalid sons when she died. Was there even one moment of genuine happiness in her downright miserable life, or is the best is yet to come applicable to her life journey?

Father once said that life is about walking it through (jalani saja)—which pretty much was what I have done since fate brought me to New York, walking through the days like a ticking clock. The major difference between now and then is that then, it was an exciting and rewarding one, while now it has become less so. Then, it was a happy time. Now, not as much. Welcome to adulthood! When I feel low, the story of her life reminds me to be grateful that I am still more blessed compared to her. I have no right to question the suffering of others, which is not mine. But how do we stop our brain from running? Can we truly numb our feelings completely in order to function? Our thoughts and feelings will never change the course of their misery; only real action could.

* * *

Life has its own unique way of taking one’s journey to a different path of awareness. Sometimes through unexpected events, sometimes through chance encounters