gue pingin nulis sesuatu yang gue alamin beberapa hari yang lalu. Coincidently, it happened on christmas eve. To some people, mungkin ini kerasa seperti sebuah cerita natal. Gue nggak berniat merendahkan atau mengurangi rasa hormat pada mereka yang percaya pada natal (or not). Gue selalu punya the outmost respect buat orang-orang yang percaya dan kepercayaan mereka, regardless of what i feel/think about them.

So here goes.

Unlike banyak orang, kali ini gue nggak menghabiskan waktu gue di rumah. Gue memaksakan diri menghabiskan tanggal 24 dan 26 di kantor. The purpose? Since this is my last deadline with this office, i'd like everything to be perfect. Dan what better way to make sure everything's perfect than to do it yourself. Perlu diingat, di artikel gue kali ini i have no staff, so gue nggak bisa nyuruh orang. And probably for the best, sementara gue dapet banyak input dari orang-orang lain, this article should be done alone.

Hari natal, tanggal 25 dan sebagian tanggal 26 memang gue habiskan di rumah. So sue me. I needed the sleep after working three days straight tanpa tidur. Gue rasa, gue udah minum kopi cukup for bulan ini. Mmm, mungkin juga nggak, karena saat ini pun gue nulis dengan secangkir kopi, dan dua sachet kopi siap di meja gue. And it's stupidly freezing at 16 degree Celsius. Oh ya, where was i? Yah, gue perlu tidur, dan walau pun lumayan capek banget, i didn't get much sleep. Pikiran gue masih belum bisa ngelepas pekerjaan yang belum selesai. So, yah, gue balik ke kantor.

Part of being a workaholic i guess. Some of this days it's going to kill me.

Baru tanggal 27/8, gue pulang lagi dan just crash into my bed. I still can't sleep. Maybe that half litre of caffein yang harus disalahkan. Gue pun sempet ngelupain beberapa barang yang mestinya gue bawa dari kantor. So basically, working at home was not an option. restless, i turned the tv and sat numblessly ngelewatin acara tembang kenangan dengan Bob Tutupoly.

Gue lumayan antusias ngelihat acara ini cepat selesai. Why? Karena seperti biasa di minggu malam, Indosiar akan mutar Alias habis acara ini. Alias, if you never watched it, is one of the best series yang ada di TV saat ini. Dan gue nggak cuma ngomong ini because of Jennifer Garner. It really is one of the most beautiful, complicated, subtle storytelling series. Basically in Alias, you CAN'T trust anyone. Not even your family, friends and enemies. Semua punya hidden agenda, dan semua punya 'aliases', dan you justify lying to the persons you care about by saying it's for their own good (or a greater goal). It's like X-Files on the very first parts of it's life. It's captivating, mysterious dan lo nggak tahu what the next episode will bring.

Enough about Alias in general. Lebih jauh lagi and i feel like i'm talking about my own life.

Episode yang diputar kali ini adalah finale to the first season. It takes place di tempat yang sama dengan episode pertama di awal, dengan orang-orang yang kurang lebih sama. Dan no surprise, gue sudah lihat seluruh first season on DVD. Thanks to the benefits of living di Indonesia, yang hukum HAKI nya practically non-existant. Dan juga second season, yang juga ada di DVD.

So after skipping a few frames di monitor komputer gue dan looking back and forth antara monitor dan TV, i've already known the whole episode by heart. Dan gue pun sempet notice beberapa blunder terjemahan Indosiar, mmmm, okay. Finally they fixed that stupid translation after all. So gue balik lagi ngelihat 23592960 pixel per detik yang ada di monitor komputer gue. There's something playing on that screen, tapi it never interest me.

It's not there. Whatever it is i'm looking at.

I feel calm, tapi gue nggak tenang. The caffeine? Quite possibly. Atau mungkin low blood sugar count karena beberapa hari hidup gue nggak teratur? Mmm, akumulatif efeknya. Since tiring myself nggak berguna, gue berusaha cari cara lain supaya gue bisa dapetin tidur yang gue udah perlu banget. Obviously.

Bermain beberapa game, while amusing, tidak cukup untuk memaksa pikiran gue berpikir. Hell, it made even think more. Dan mata gue pun nggak bisa lihat jelas layar. No, ini bukan nggak jelas dari mata gue, but i really am having trouble keeping my eyes open. Lucunya, pada saat yang sama gue nggak bisa nutup mata.

Quandary. Atau paradox? No, quandary. It's two opposite things happening at the same time. Opposite - vector context wise. Paradox itu ketika dua event yang berbeda punya hubungan kausalitas to and fro. Causality, hmmm, very Matrix-like.

An image flashed in my mind. No, wait. itu sebenarnya gambar gue lihat dari TV. It looks familiar. The scenery, the songs and the text. Basil Poleodouris. I'm having trouble placing the connection. Wait, i know this movie. Billy August, ya. It's the latest rendition of Les Miserables, of Victor Hugo. Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman dan Claire Danes. Gue punya kopi film ini. Hmm, i bought this one. Lupa kapan. But i bought it, tanpa tahu it even existed. The movie, not the story. I know Les Miserables by heart.

beberapa orang dan sastrawan will argue that Les Miserables is the greatest of Victor Hugo's work. Ia bercerita begitu banyak mengenai humanity di saat-saat Prancis (and much of Europe) was at the time. Kita tidak melihat much of the glory of Europe. No, kita berbicara mengenai kelaparan dan kemiskinan yang melanda benua itu. Of the evils humans do, and how the past will haunt you.

Through Valjean's eyes, we see the search for redemption. Bagaimana satu malam bisa merubah seseorang, membantah kebenaran 'that people are inherently evil - by birth or by experience'. This fight, this struggle adalah keputusan yang kita buat setiap hari, sadar atau tidak. And Valjean stayed true to his promise - to become a new a man and to take care of Cosette. Dan hal-hal lain, they never mattered. Kedua janji itu sudah menjadi the sole purpose of life buat Jean Valjean, whose only crime in life was being poor, hungry. Something that he never choose to be, since it was chosen for him.

Purpose.
Faith.
Love,

I envied Victor Hugo for putting it so beautifully. No, that's not right. I envied Valjean. I envied the chance encounter he had on his trip to Dijon. I envied the courage, the will and strength of his heart. I envied what he had and what i do not have. Kalau ada orang yang bertanya why, isn't it obvious?

Apa yang membedakan Valjean dan Javert? Two souls thrown into the hell that was France, neither had any control of the choices life handed to them. Dimana Javert lived his life 'by the rules', Valjean breaks them, just once. And he is hunted down for that one mistake. For which the stigma of being a convict is forever stamped to his forehead, or rather his passport. Sayangnya, to this day and age, this never changes. It's still true now as it was then. Both are men driven to a single purpose - albeit a different one for each.

Javert is not a bad man, although he is the antagonist in the story. Simply put, he was doing his job. Dia percaya what he did is the right thing to do. And you know what? It is. Just like apa yang diajarkan orang everyday di elementary school, or madrasah, or sekolah minggu. The only fault he had done was never looking beyond what he sees. He never considered the possibilities. Valjean is the exception to the rule. Sesuatu yang Javert thought was impossible. Something that didn't fit his view of the world.

Extreme possibilities.

If someone were to ask me now, i would probably tell them i'd give my life for what Valjean had. Funny thing is, we (i) do. We do it everyday. We walked the same path Valjean did, or at least what he did in Victor Hugo's mind, everyday. It never changes sejak dulu. Masalahnya hanya apa kita buat pilihan yang dia buat. Setiap hari we walk the path to the unknown future. And in that unknown, something extraordinary as that trip to Dijon in Valjean's life might happen to us. It might not be now, or tomorow or even weeks, months or years. Even to one as bitter and cold as Valjean. Victor Hugo was not only talking about humanity, but of the best thing that humanity has to offer.

Hope.

Even for those who do not believe in them.

So we kept on going.
Everyday.

I chose the path of Javert. After all, hal yang terjadi pada Valjean juga terjadi Javert. What do you ask? What could possibly be peristiva yang sama terjadi pada Valjean juga terjadi pada Javert? Isn't is so easy, my friends? He met Valjean. He just never saw it for what it really was. His redemption.

Beranikah gue mengatakan i believe in that? That i believe at all. Believing in extreme possibilities, one i could never fathom or know?

There is hope.

Belief speaks about who we are, and free will (choice) speaks of the road we've chosen for ourselves. Hope speaks of what we aspire to be. We're forever bound by the bonds of causality. But once in awhile, we prove to be the exception to the rule. It simply not right, nor wrong. It just simply is. We just need to understand this, the why and not the what could've.

We love, we betray, we hate, we hurt. We feel, we fold, we fail. We wonder. we dream.

we are human.