I am one of those people who always complained about my Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve or any highly regarded public holiday being sucky, miserable and all the negative words my mouth can throw out.
Exactly one year ago, I spent my New Year’s Eve in Sacramento, with a group of exchange students, struggling to fit in the middle of the city where the countdown was happening. Somehow I really felt like I was the most miserable person on earth. Spent the night with other 3 girls on a queen bed in a crappy hotel in downtown Sacramento, not being able to sleep well and being as melancholic as ever. Especially after looking at the irony of how such joyous occasion with people coming together, fireworks in the night sky, noises, performances, everything good, is also the exact day where bridges are heavily barricaded to protect people from committing suicides. Such celebrations are truly not helping the melancholic people at all, it really in turn brought them deeper into self-pity. And I’m one of the self-pitier. LOL.
Looking at the comments in facebook, twitter or maybe even fmylife (didn’t specifically go there but I figured it would be full of similar my-new-year-sucked stories), I can’t help but wonder how people are judging their joy or probably happiness (knowing that those 2 words meant totally different things) in celebrating New Year and Christmas. When we said we had the worst Christmas’ Eve or New Year’s Eve, or whatever eves, what do they compare it to? Did they have too much fun the years before, that this year just can’t come in comparison anymore? Or do they look at others and think that they’re the worst? I asked myself this question this year.
The reality struck me so hard when I went to Jakarta during Christmas’ Eve. How can we, who have spent all our years being well-fed, well-clothed, well-homed, still think that we’re the worst?
If we have had the privilege to enjoy and be joyful about such celebrations years before and not this “sucky” year, then give thanks for those years, give thanks that we still got to enjoy at least 1 day of such joyful occasions. I see with my own eyes how on Christmas Eve, people still work hard to survive, people with bones not even strong enough to carry the body weight, dragged themselves around, begging for money. What else can they do right? I wonder if they ever had any kind of such celebrations. Or are they just fighting for survival all their lives?
If we’ve never really gotten the kind of celebrations we always dreamed of, I think about so many people in Indonesia who still live below the income of $2, $3, $5, $10, or whatever amount, those of whom would be so glad and so grateful if they could’ve just spent one of the “sucky” celebration we proclaimed “the worst new year’s eve ever!”.
I always complained about my own family members of being very cold and I have always not preferred spending all these important dates with them. Who am I, and what have I done for them, such that I can expect so much out of them and not put even the slightest effort to regard them as true family? I look at others, how warm their families are, and sometimes I wonder why am I not in their positions. But I guess the real question is, who am I to think that I deserve to be in my family? They could’ve had a much filial daughter, a caring sister, a gentle niece, a much better girl to be in my position, but instead they’ve got me.
To think that I deserve whatever I have, is way too arrogant. And I wish to change that this new year.
Wanna learn, no matter how hard it takes, to sincerely give thanks and be grateful, for all the small details and big events.
Tags: Bridges, Celebrating New Year, Celebrations, Christmas Eve, Countdown, Different Things, Exchange Students, Fireworks, Irony, jakarta, Joyous Occasion, Miserable Person, new year, Night Sky, Privilege, Public Holiday, Queen Bed, Self Pity, Suicides, twitter
