Twenty-Six

Twenty-Six

Note: This article represents the author’s personal opinion and does not reflect the views of CNBCIndonesia.com’s editorial team.

Introduction to the series The Death of Economics: In a world that keeps moving faster yet feels increasingly empty, we invite you to pause, look back, look within and look ahead.

The Death of Economics series is not merely a collection of criticisms. It is an honest attempt to view economics from an angle that is rarely illuminated: a side that is not always efficient, not always rational, but entirely human.

Here, we want to refresh our memory of why economics exists—not merely as a tool for calculation, but as a reflection of the joy, achievement, suffering, inequality and hope of our times.

At the age of 26, I once looked at my future and saw it as empty. I was sitting alone at Coffee Bean in Plaza Senayan when I saw a woman’s Facebook status change to “in a relationship”. I stared at the screen for a long time. That woman was not my girlfriend.

To be honest, I had no right to feel that I had lost anything. We had never been in a relationship, there had been no promises, no arguments and no break-up. I was simply too late.

Apparently, it is possible to have a broken heart over losing something you never had. I closed Facebook and, I don’t know how much later, stood up and walked out.

That afternoon, Plaza Senayan was as usual. People carried shopping bags, restaurants began to fill up, and the escalators kept going up and down. People talked, laughed and chose somewhere to eat.

Nothing had changed, except my life—or at least, that was how it felt at the time. I walked faster and faster. Whether from anger, sadness or embarrassment at myself, I nearly smashed the bag I was carrying. I stopped, as though a broken bag would only make my thoughts heavier.

I was only 26 then. I did not have much; my career and identity had yet to take shape. I did not know what I would become, where I would live or who would eventually be by my side.

Strangely, just when I knew almost nothing about the future, that afternoon I felt certain of one thing: I would be alone for a very long time. And the part that still feels strange when I think about it now is that I was not entirely wrong.

A few months before that afternoon, I had actually tried. It was Ramadan, and I bought a cake from Colette & Lola. A close friend accompanied me to deliver it. We went in his car, a BMW 750iL, the one that reminds you of Tomorrow Never Dies. I no longer remember what we talked about.

Perhaps my friend knew I was nervous; perhaps he teased me. Maybe we talked about something else entirely. We were still in our twenties. At that age, we often think there are so many tomorrows ahead.

When we arrived, the woman was not there; her mother accepted the cake instead. I was briefly confused. It seemed sensible to take the cake back, go home and pretend the trip had never happened. But I had already made it there, so I handed it over. The next day, a message came through BlackBerry Messenger: “Thank you.”

I was happy. It was as simple as that. After that, somehow, I did nothing more. Life suddenly became busy. One day passed, then the next; a few days became weeks. There was always work to finish first. There was always something that seemed more urgent.

And there was always tomorrow. Until one day, there was nothing left to do. It seems some things do not end because we decide to end them. We simply realise too late that they are over.

The day after that afternoon at Coffee Bean, my alarm still rang. I got up and went to work. The next day, I did the same. There was no music playing, no one came to save me, and there was no morning when I opened my eyes and suddenly understood why everything had happened that way.

Life, it seems, has a very undramatic way of carrying on. We shower, go to work, have lunch and go home. Then one day we laugh again without planning to. And some time later, we even forget there was ever a time when laughter seemed impossible.

Years passed. Jobs changed, incomes changed, friends changed. The city grew noisier. I met people I had not known on that afternoon at Coffee Bean. I went to places I had never imagined. I read books I had never heard of back then. Some people came briefly, some stayed longer, and some simply disappeared.

Some things I desperately wanted never happened. Strangely, some things I never wanted at all became important parts of my life. Gradually, without any official announcement, the future that once seemed empty began to fill up. Not with the things I had imagined, but with things whose existence I had not even known.

Perhaps we have a peculiar weakness when it comes to looking at the future. We can only imagine it using what is available today: the people we know today, the jobs we have today, the fears we feel today. We take the world in front of us and extend its lines forward. That is why, when something very important disappears, it is easy to feel that the future has disappeared with it.

I have seen something similar in many areas of life. There are times when a company seems unable to recover. There are cities once considered finished, countries that have felt their best days were behind them, and families who lost almost everything and, a few years later, found a different way of living.

We are very good at seeing what has been lost, but much worse at imagining what has not yet been born. Perhaps that is because something that does not yet exist has no shape for us to see.

I do not want to say that the fear felt by that 26-year-old man was wrong. That would be too easy. Parts of his life really were empty for quite a while; there were nights he spent alone, and some losses were never replaced by anything. The life that came later did not bring back what had been lost. It simply grew around it.

I have come to appreciate this way of looking at life. A tree does not erase a scar on its trunk as it grows; the scar remains. But a few years later, we have to look more closely to find it, because so much new wood has grown around it.

Perhaps people are the same. Being all right does not mean never being hurt again. Nor does it mean that every empty space is eventually filled. Sometimes being all right simply means that our lives have become large enough for an emptiness no longer to constitute the whole of our lives.

Some time ago, I thought again about that trip to deliver the cake. Not mainly because of the cake, nor because of the woman who was meant to receive it. I remembered the person who sat beside me in the car that afternoon. That friend had since passed away.

Since then, the trip has felt different. I tried to remember what we talked about in the car. I could not. I tried to remember whether we laughed. Perhaps we did.

I tried to remember which road we took. Nothing remains clear. I regret not paying closer attention then. But of course, we could not have known. We did not know that one day one of us would be trying to remember that afternoon alone.

We were just going to deliver a cake. That is how life preserves itself—not always in the days we consider important. Sometimes it is in an ordinary journey, a car, a box of cake, a conversation already forgotten and a friend we thought would always be there.

The Coffee Bean where I sat that afternoon is no longer there either. The site has become PAUL. I do not remember exactly when it disappeared. Perhaps one day its sign was taken down, its tables moved and its coffee machine carried away; then people came to work and built something new in the same place.

Plaza Senayan is still standing, and people still sit there. They order coffee, look at their phones, meet and wait for someone. No one knows that years earlier, in one corner of the place, a 26-year-old man stared at a screen and felt that his future was over.

Sometimes I imagine that I could sit across from him again. I would not want to tell him that everything would be all right, because I know he would ask in return: “All right in what way?”

And I would not have a simple answer. Some people he loves will leave; some of his dreams will not come true. He will gain things he cannot imagine now and lose things he thinks will always be there. He will change, and the world will change too. Even the Coffee Bean where we sat will no longer exist.

So I would not make a prediction for him. I think I would simply sit beside him, perhaps let him look at that BlackBerry screen a little longer. And when he finally asked whether his life would be empty after this, I would say something he might not believe at 26: “I don’t know.”

Because now I understand that empty and yet to happen are two very different things. The future I saw back then never came to pass. Another future did, and strangely, I am all right.