Ney Cat

Nekat. A quick quip slang from Indonesian. It might be my life motto, nekat to do anything anyone tells me I should not or mainly can not do. It is all a matter of will power, and trying to be an optimist in the hardest of times. No, I don’t feel like I have lived that hard of a life. I grew up in the States for crying out loud, how could that have been hard for me? I must’ve lived the perfect life, right? 

Well, back to the subject, to really embody this form of nekat, I believe one must really put themselves and their way of thinking upfront. Why? Because nekat in my understanding is at least, to always know your own principle of what you want out of your life. What is the purpose of learning? Meeting new people? Discovering new places? Doing things you might have not done before? 

This self belief, however big or small you make it out to be, is important to keep you being who you are and who you want to be. Your history is what builds you, but yourself and your vision is what pushes you. And no, your vision will not be your comfort zone. Panic will ensue in however way possible once you feel that you are in your comfort zone. It’s up to you to find comfort in that panic. Taking deep breaths, and sighs of relief calms me down quite well. 

What I am worst at, where the pinnacle of my panic is, in the preparation to tell my story. Any story. I am so used to just picking out my mindpalace, any story I could find, may it be relevant or not or sometimes random, that’s how my brain has been working. A great blackbox of mostly true stories, might sometimes be stretched after multiple tellings, but their based on some truth I remember. But the due date of my story telling, I pull out the nekat inside of me, take a wudhu and some deep breaths, and my world is calmer for that split second. 

To be frank, I’m certain finding my way to one of the greatest schools on earth (yes I didn’t use the phrase world) is due to encouragement from colleagues, teachers, and family. But a big quality I really do believe I have deep down in my gut is modal nekat. It’s Nike’s Just Do It. It’s Casey Neistat’s Do More and Do What You Can’t. It’s #donotsettle. It’s #antiwacana. It’s #antitunda. It’s how we live life nowadays with all this tech and coding jargon. 

Our earth is now not only spinning but I also feel that we’re swinging. Flash floods from heavy rainfall now in Jakarta (which hasn’t happened since ‘05) and sudden snow so early in December here in Delft (there wasn’t any snow until around mid January last winter). Embrace it and enjoy the ride peeps. We thought we knew how the world works, but it’s just now showing it’s real swing.

So, should we take it slow or accelerate? To counter my nekat-ness, I guess for me now to balance is to decelerate. Maybe it is time to be thankful for being a bit late. 

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