by Jennie S. Bev
I live with a strong sense of awe and wonder. I love and adore mysteries. They are all around and inside me. Things unknown, things in the future, things far away, and things I keep close dearly to heart.
Mysteries keep me alive and craving for more.
In the end, they give me ecstasy.
We might have been looking for answers throughout our lifetime, yet answers are actually not what we are looking for.
Answers are finite; they close cases and books. Answers are closure, despite the following questions requiring new and more elaborated answers.
Sometimes the best things in life can’t be answered. Some things are better left unsaid, untouched and unanswered.
Many things are better left as illusions. Illusions of grandeur, illusion of Utopia, and illusions of darkness.
What we are longing for is to live with mysteries. Look without and within. We are consumers of mysteries and we are also creators of mysteries.
Culture feeds our hunger for mysteries and illusion of closures. Films, books, news, and schooling quench our thirst for them.
We have the urge to understand them all. Yet, we understand none.
Certain subjects pique our interest: death, crime, blood, catastrophe, war, anatomy, galaxy, and – what else – sex. They are intriguing because to understand them takes more than an ordinary comprehension and willingness to delve into their cores and essences.
To understand them requires a deep sense of curiosity and complex imagination to begin with. Then it takes a few deep breaths to compartmentalize our existing shelf of knowledge to ready it for riddles and conundrums.
These things keep our blood boiling and heart warm. They give us a mysterious reason to love and to attempt a deeper understanding for life. Perhaps they are the murals of our dark side, or simply our curious hemisphere of the brain.
Death and sex are two favorite mysteries of all time. They have been exploited for centuries in various forms and stories. Just like the story of vampires and werewolves that has been popularized recently by Stephanie Meyer’s The Twilight saga with Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black.
In this saga, death is anticipated by Bella as it would “resurrect” her into vampiredom. And sex is the most forbidden thing as it is not only “morally” wrong but also anatomically wrong.
How come something so dark provide so much anticipation? Is it the ultimate illusion? Or is it simply our human psyche that is so thirsty for mysteries?
Crime, blood, catastrophe and war often come as a package. They make us cringe, curse, weep and get mad as hell, but they also make human civilization move forward to new ages and close the periods prior.
Great civilizations have always been tarnished – or even embellished – by great battles. Battles for power, battles for prestige, battles for ideology, and battles for the mere notion of winning over others. And these battles breed both winners and losers, erect symbols of triumphs as well as weep innocent casualties.
Battles prove us to be rulers or bystanders, the powerful or the powerless. We are human, after all, part angels, part devils. Complete mortals.
We are capable of doing good as well as bad things. We are capable of loving as well as hating. We are capable of consuming mysteries as well as creating illusions. Which one are you, by the way?
The dominant part, either the good or bad, determines our overall outlook on life. Hence, it doesn’t stay that way for good, as things flow, nothing stays the same. At one point we are good boys with a tiny spot of bold intention, at some other point we are bad girls with illusory hopes and wishes.
We are humans. I am human. And we all love mysteries. In fact, life itself is a mystery of the highest order. We breathe, we love, we loathe, we procreate, we get sick, we suffer, we are happy, we are grieving and then we die.
The first and the last breaths are milestones. How we live with mysteries in between, colors who we are and our choices.
I live with a strong sense of awe and wonder. I love mysteries. They keep me engulfed with the passion to understand who I am and what the world is all about.
Above all, I am also a part of the grand mystery of life. The reason for my birth has not unfolded. And it is my mission to solve that mystery.
What an ecstasy.[]
The Jakarta Post, July 7, 2010
