Fresh Wind & Green Grass

The last time I spent nights at my Dad's house was when my mother passed away. Two years passed, and I found myself sleeping in my old room with the things that brought back memories. Nothing changes on the second floor of this house. All my mom’s stuff, exactly in the place when I last saw ‘em. 

My undergraduate thesis was about death. I worked on that for more than 1 year, flooding myself with philosophy books of life meaning and death thoughts. Death for me was no longer scary since then. It’s just a life phenomenon that we must accept as a part of our life stage. So many young people hope that they were never born, and so many old people hope to greet death sooner. At the end of the day, we need to deal with it, and I always choose to pity the ones who were left behind, not those who died. Those thoughts came to me very often while I was packing all my mom’s old stuff and put in the donation box.

My dad has been remarried after my mom died. At first, I was so angry with this decision, but just a year later, I was on an expedition and had a chance to talk with a friend. In the middle of the Eastern sea, she told me that she was a child of a remarried couple. She also experienced a kind of hatred from the first child of her dad, but she seemed okay with that. She said she understood and hoped someday she would be accepted. That conversation left a black hole in my mind; humans can easily hate others for a mistake that person never made. My friend has never been asked to be born by her parents. 

On another chance, someone I respect told me that, at least in my mom’s lifetime, my dad has been a faithful and responsible husband. Ensuring that my family was never in hunger or lack of education. Plus, being faithful and committed to only one person for 28 years is not easy. And that makes sense to me. After my dad lost my mother, he never threw away her goods (and he’s still having a folder of her pictures on his phone) or put down her pictures in the living room. He just needed a partner before he died (because all his kids are now living their own lives far away). 

Being in my childhood house has taught me acceptance. It gave me time for myself to take a step back to review all my decisions in the past and what I needed to advance. I might never agree with my dad’s decision, but at least I am no longer in anger or hatred.

I just realized from that one-week stay that acceptance is a product of deep reflection on a step back in time.

I had a colleague during my internship around 2013 who was dreaming of being dead at the age of 27 because she was a fan of Club 27. The memory of her came back to my head earlier this year, reminding me that I'm turning 27 this year. Among those so-called "Club 27", Amy Winehouse was one of my favorite singers. These people died leaving a legacy, and obviously, that's making me ask what my legacy is on my first morning of turning 27.

When I was younger, I was naive and full of idealism and dreams. I believe that everyone should form their legacy from a very young age. As I'm getting older, I'm finding the pieces of the puzzle called "Life" rather than trying so hard to build a legacy. These are my takeaways that I never learned from my parents or classroom.

I learned them the hard way, one step at a time. 

People say that losing someone is a life-changing experience. I agree. The death of my mother two years ago was an eye-opener for me in many ways. I can't consider myself close to my mom, but the damage after she left is still there. The fact that I wasn't next to her death bed was so strong to me, remembering that when I was born, I slept in her bed in the hospital, and I was never put in the special room for babies. Since she left, I began to understand that there are so many things that I haven't understood in this universe. One example, she questioned me before she died why I could fall in love with someone only because he's smart? I was confused because, at that time, I thought it was normal. My mom just laughed without any explanation. I thought she married my father because my father's smart. It's been two years I just realized that often, intelligence doesn't always mean a good attitude.

The next year, I lost my friend, who spent a significant amount of time with me back in the United States. But if we think again, we've lost so many friends throughout our life. The number of close friends is significantly decreased as we age, and maybe someday, it will be only one left; our spouse. I figured out that losing friends doesn't always mean only when the person is dead, but when we stop to talk to each other, the relationship has gone somewhere. When a person only contacts you whenever they need something from you, it's no longer a friendship. And I'm lucky enough that I still got some friends who contact me because they only want to have a talk with me. Friends who accept me for every decision I've made in life, even when it's different from what they believe in, and still want to celebrate their life with me. Friends who forgive and understand my situation whenever I'm unable to be with them and never take revenge. 

My progress so far in this age that I have figured out who is in my family and friends' circle worth to be fighting for. Those who are kind and wise enough to consider the context and situation for everyone - with no drama. Fortunately, I got some.

I wanted to be in academia for most of my life, and now am closer to stepping out of that possibility. A science refugee I am. I've found myself falling in love with science and building a small career as a scientist while making significant progress in the for-profit industry. Both worlds give me a more comprehensive view of how our species survive and how the economy supports us, and how to minimize the impact on humanity and the environment. Earlier this year, I decided to go back to my root, science, as I've committed to several research projects this year as a fully-paid scientist but also to go back as a data-driven strategist for a digital marketing company.

What I learned through my almost 7 years of professional career is that I really hate to work with someone who's lied in the past. A person without integrity can really piss me off because a lie is often never said once. You never know how many times you've been lied to by a person that you know can lie about you behind your back. I also learn that I can manage myself to stay away from fanaticism, and that I've never really loved my job or the organization where I work that much; rather, I can be very objective if my job and workplace are healthy enough for me doing the job (and I never value my job satisfaction only on how famous the company I work for is).

Another important thing that I learn from my career (and mostly from my dear first boss for the first three years) is about leadership. A good leader that can bring everyone in the organization to be loyal and love their job is a leader who can talk equally to their team members. A leader who isn't hesitating to eat what others eat and jokes about life just like how others joke about it. A leader who can embrace all ranges of emotions rather than asking to forget small problems that actually can pile up into a tower of problems (the worst thing an organization can do is to ask us to repress our negative emotions). I remember one time when I made a mistake (and that was really, really bad, emotionally, and I was too young to understand) to a client; my boss was in front of me, taking all the mistakes upon his shoulder and asked the client to have a face to face meeting. He apologized to the client, but he never scolded me for that problem. He then talked to me during a very nice lunch and said it was okay to make mistakes. Now I know that is a very rare case of a leader. We're both still on very good terms now, sometimes, I call him to ask his opinion on my major decisions, and he's one of the very few people that remember my birthday (after years I've quit his company!). He's also the one who showed me that joking with your security officer never downgrades your status as a leader; it does level you up as a respected leader - and I know that lots of his employees stay because of his leadership. You might come from somewhere, a university that nobody knows, or a very humble family, but the combination of attitude and integrity is a critical key to gaining respect.

One last thing that I learned is making a priority. As I grow older, I realize too many things to do in too little time. Lots of interesting offers come by in our email, but we need to choose from multiple options. Next month, I am invited to a very interesting networking event for international science communicators, but I already had another commitment with a government entity to give a workshop. I choose that commitment, even though the schedule hasn't been firmed, but I want to be available for them. I can imagine if my 20-year-old self were in this kind of situation, I would try very hard to do all. I've realized now that I have to be focused and realistic with all resources that I got - and the most valuable resource is -- time. My priority now is to provide time for people whom I really care about. I am now working in a place that allows me to spend most of the time working from home or anywhere that I think is most productive for me - and I transparently explain to them that I also have another work for building communications effort for an NGO, my personal science projects, and I need personal time too. This is such a privilege that not everyone can access, so I am truly blessed, I am. This is why I do really enjoy all my jobs and offices at this point and feel that I'm at my peak of work performance - because they provide me the freedom to put my beloved ones as my top priority.

Around five years ago, my dad said that there was no finish line to working. At that time, I didn't understand his standpoint. Now, I do. I also never understood why he always made a call if he needed to give an evening lecture on his campus, and I never understood why my mother always asked the same question all the time: "Have you eaten?" How could they do that for more than 25 years, which looked sooo boring to the younger version of me?

Now I have someone that I really care about, and I understand that was their language of love. While I don't believe in "true unconditional love", I do believe that respect is a universal language of love. My mother never asked my father to cancel his working schedule, and my father never asked my mom to stop her "many" social activities (my mom was a kind of partygoer, and my dad is an ultimate homebody). Again, I am truly blessed that I've met someone who really understands my job and my personality and compromise; rather than asking me to change.

Marriage is something else. For me, marriage is never a symbol of love; rather, it's a symbol of commitment to share a lifetime space with someone else. The first trigger that made me think that I needed to marry my man was my mother's death; if we're not officially listed as family, we can't make any major decision at the hospital about someone's life. The second trigger was when I tried to understand the administration of home mortgages, we will get life insurance to pay off all the mortgage when we die, but the house will be only left to an official family member. The third trigger was when I helped with someone's funeral, and I just found out that it is only an official family member who can report your death to the authorities and get an official letter for the funeral. I do really want to do all of those to someone I really care about. I want to be there when he's sick, he's dead, and when I died, he'll get all my wealth to move on with life - and fortunately, he thought the same way.

I learn that love is a thing and marriage is an entity; both build upon trust and respect, and that's only functional for two healthy and conscious souls.

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Any strangers whom I met at the airport or plane would raise their eyebrows when I said, “Oh - I go there to research human-wildlife conflict”. Their face would even become more peculiar when I said, “My background is in psychology”. Then in the dead air of their confusion, I would explain that conservationists need more understanding of human psychology because, at the end of the day, humans hold an important key to biodiversity protection. This is not a “human-centrist heroism” idea; it is just a fact that we are the most responsible towards nowadays most biodiversity problems.

A vast number of climate scientists (97%) have agreed that human actions are the cause of climate change. This is a “very nice” sentence because, in my opinion, an excessive rate of human population growth is the major cause - but we are too much trying to avoid saying this in the name of “human rights”. Almost 50% of the world's forests have been cut because of our population and need growth. Bill Gates once argued (to be noted that I do not always agree with his opinion) saving the environment requires improvement in health and welfare - also controlling birth. Evidence shows that the increase in education access and the marrying age of women will help reduce the rate of birth problems.

If we can pull the string of the facts in the previous paragraph, can we say that supporting women’s achievement can save species? I would say yes. I have research that shows the significant difference between women's and men’s attitudes toward wildlife, and it has a correlation with their experience with nature. In most developing countries, there are clear gender roles that put men as the “face” of the family, so they would attend most the community meetings and discussions, whereas women will be only waiting at home, cooking dinner. This kind of limited access of women to information will definitely shape their attitudes and also behavior. This is only one example of how understanding biodiversity changes is not enough to solve it. We need to understand humans, and saying to understand them, equals understanding how to measure their opinions and behavior.

If you’re reading this and you have a background in social science and often feel disconnected from environmental issues, I think you need to dig more. Lots of environmental problems overlap with human rights problems - say indigenous people’s right to access clean water and open space. Climate change warms the earth, and mosquitoes will be able to access areas that they were unable to access before, spreading the disease more easily and demanding more healthy behavior across the world. People in Alaska are losing their land due to abrasion, causing people to get more distressed (people in colder places tend to be more frustrated, now add this), affecting their mental health. Climate injustice raises the gap between the rich and the pauper, where the latter are more prone to climate change than the privileged one, worsening the poverty issue.

Now if you’re reading this and you have a background in biology and often feel that your program needs no social context and understanding, I would say that is awesome because that is a very rare case. The number one problem of conservation is habitat change, and that is unavoidable because humans need more space. I have another research that proves how living in a dense area could make you become more egoistic and less careful about the environment. In psychology, we have ‘attention fatigue’ term to explain that when there is too much distraction, people will be very selective on the things that they want to focus on. When there are other things that are prioritized by these people, how would you make conservation one of their priorities if you don’t understand how they think?

In a world full of rapid changes, I think conservation should be more and more multidisciplinary. Biologists need to invite more social scientists, and likewise, social scientists need to be more open to conservation projects. We are facing the sixth extinction, and working multidisciplinary might hold the key to saving even our own species. For a long time, business frameworks have adapted this approach and see how they have gained profit with this thinking. It is time for conservationists to adapt the for-profit framework in an effort to protect what we have been exploiting in the name of profit for humankind.

Just a key for anyone who is now inspired to work with a multidisciplinary research team:

lower your ego.

We all have one little dream in our brain that we know it's just too silly to hope comes true one day, and we always keep trying to get rid of this dream. Over time, we live our day-to-day life trying to forget this dream. But it does cross our mind again when we're alone - particularly when we just woke up but need a few seconds to start the day or when the night comes, and we're too lazy to shut our eyes to bed. This happens for days, months, and even - years.

First Gathering with Another Psychology UI Alumna in 2019 ©Alleyway Café

When my boyfriend told me that the first person known in history who might put the fundamentals of evolution was an Arabic scholar, I purchased a book written by Jim Al-Khalili titled "Pathfinders - The Golden Age of Arabic Science". The book contains a story about Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī, the one who wrote a lengthy book about animals. Known by his short name Al-Jāhiz/ Al-Jāhith, he wrote an original idea on how he observed some animals sharing similar characteristics and features, such as dogs, wolves, and foxes, must have a similar line of ancestry. Other scholars were underrated in the Eurocentric academia era: Al-Khwārizmi (from whom the "algorithm" word is derived), who produced Kitab Al-Jebr and was a respected mathematician, Al-Ma'mūn who ordered the excavation of the Great Pyramid of Khufu - to help his curiosity exploring the civilization of pharaohs long before Islam arrived, Abbās ibn Firnās the world's first aviator, or Omar Khayyām - Abbāsid scholar, a poet and a great mathematician whose greatest contribution on cubic equation (and was likely an agnostic Muslim). 

But it came to my surprise that science was developed vastly by some big Muslim scholars in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. We know how Iraq's image nowadays - and it is far from science. There was a movement of rationalist Muslims called Mu'tazili, but then got backlash from conservative Muslims who -according to Al-Khalili, holds certain anti-scientific attitudes that have held back technological, economic, and social progress in many Muslim countries. The final chapter of the book was even astonishing for me, as Al-Khalili being an atheist himself, noted how Eurocentric scholars and science should put more light on these forgotten people who inspired West scholars at the beginning. They also, in fact, had good correspondence with the West world. There is no big finding without small steps at the outset.

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Forgotten people are everywhere. I currently have ongoing research with my office in the traditional market to identify the possible system to support the new Denpasar city law regarding single-use plastics usage. Then I met Mr. Wayan, leader of Pasar Intaran in Sanur, a middle-aged man who has extensive experience in managing the traditional market for more than 10 years. On some sunny days, I occasionally found him helping with the parking service. He is a visionary man who builds Pasar Intaran to be the cleanest traditional market I've ever seen. 

Then I met my old friends in psychology school and talked about the growing community who questioned the role of scientific journals. Being a systematic organization, they managed the publication of a hundred thousand scientific papers out there without benefiting the reviewers. We debated the pros and cons, but he made a point: there are lots of forgotten people and communities who struggle to make science the most accessible for all and, in return, raise the impact of science itself. There are lots of objections in my head; for example, is it true that by making scientific articles for the public, the public will download them, read them, and utilize them to tackle their daily problems? I am not really sure about that - then comes another forgotten party that makes science accessible for laymen: science communicators.

In the last five years, I found that being a science communicator is hard. I am not saying that other jobs are easy peasy, but dealing with the audience, subject matters, and scientists at the same time could be convoluted. Working in a relatively compact organization with minimum politics really helped me of doing my day-to-day assignments, and that is the sole reason I have no interest in joining large corporations or research agencies - at least until today. 

There are other people who are often forgotten in our life:

those who pray for us.

I had an outstanding experience accompanying a middle-aged woman after her husband's death for almost a year. I assisted her in visiting remote places, met some farmers, and witnessed her praying for many nights. I learned about going through a painful moment in life and getting ongoing. One night, she showed me a prayer of Mother Mary. She wished that I could be as strong and forgiving as Mother Mary. I won't forget that night. She said she would be always praying for my health and wealth. I had a birthday last month. Since that experience of Mother Mary prayer, every time someone wishes sincerely for me on my birthday, I feel very happy. It doesn't matter if the prayer would be only floating between the stars; what does matter is their good intention and gratitude for our presence.

But then I realize that in this age, having a fancy birthday celebration is no longer important.
Being forgotten by so many people is also no longer imperative.

Citing my boss, what matters with our age is never the number; it's rather what we do with it.