The only good thing about chaos is without it we may never have such a big desire for happiness.
Being born in 1980s Indonesia, I was let to believe that many of the things that seemed good at that time were really good. That everyone in the army were all patriots and heroes, like written in the history books that we all needed to read and memorize for years in elementary school. That a family could only be happy if they have many kids, a big house and more than one car… a car for the husband, a car for the wife, and a car for the kids, or even a car for each kid.
That the only way to get there was to study as hard as you can during school, and to graduate with the highest scores (at any cost), and later to work as hard as you can to earn as much money as you can and spend those money as little as you can – even if it would have to suppress or con others. I’ve seen parents, especially Chinese parents, who taught their kids never to trust anyone in business… making the kids to believe that in business everyone is a prey, a target, an object to exploit. To suppress. To milk. To take advantage of. To manipulate. That it’s a matter of who’s smarter, and the smarter will take control and crush the weaker, and wins all.
As if the world is a battlefield, and who has the strongest weapon rules – or must rule – those with the weaker weapon. Like in the army.
As if the world is one big war. One big arena, where the inhabitants try to defeat one another… instead of one big area, where the inhabitants try to live with their differences in harmony.
As if living is just about target, target, and target… instead of desires, dreams and plans. If so, what is the difference between us and animals? Even an ape doesn’t kill another ape.
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I’m 33 this year. At the same age as mine 33 years ago, my father had already had me, and a house, and a car. Perhaps 2 cars, I didn’t remember. He always told me that he brought me home from the hospital for the first time driving a Datsun pickup that he bought brand-new. It was one of only two cars that he bought brand-new, since he’s a second-hand car dealer and many of our cars are second-hand.
I would grow up learning his tricks when he bought and sold those second-hand cars, as well as accompanying him when he went lobbying or supervising his civil engineering projects – his main job.
As much as I love growing up among those cars, the part that I enjoyed most was the car itself – the design, the features, the names and the brands – never the dealing part. That’s why I always “underachieved” when my father tried to place me as the sales. And he kept on doing that, believing that to survive and excel sooner or later I would need to be able to do the sales, or marketing as he called it (in the city where I grew up, almost nobody can tell the difference between sales and marketing).
The thing that I didn’t like most about doing the sales the way my father and many Chinese fathers do it is how I need to trick the customer. I’ve always believed there’s a way to convince the customer with the truths that we have. And even if they don’t like the truth, then for me it’s ok, there’s always another customer. I’ve always wanted the customer to do the purchase because they want to, or because they need to… not because they have to, or because they don’t know what they’re buying.
To my father’s defense, he didn’t trick as much as other second-hand car dealers. For example, we never buy a shit and dress it up and call it a diamond. But I was still uncomfortable by the way we had to tell that it was our cousin’s car, or our sister’s car, while it’s not, in order to convince the buyer that we knew the car’s record since brand-new.
I also didn’t enjoy getting maximum profits or breaking a record of selling-price if it means a customer needs to empty his pocket for the car he needs, which is not brand-new or an antique. Of course there are also some satisfied customers… and customers who grow addicted to our items, who couldn’t stop buying even if they would go short of money after. I couldn’t find the joy in it. Yet at that time I couldn’t think any other way than to advise my father, even if it was never successful, because I was fed from the money earned from it.
That’s probably what drove me to pursue other fields than my father’s.
You may call it running away from the problem. But in this wilderness I’ve had the opportunity to practice a happy economy. Where clients happily buy my ideas, where we happily produce the work with certain production house or director or photographer or artists – and pay them well. Where customers like our works and the brands that we work for.
Even if this doesn’t happen everyday, it does give me hope that the happy economy exists, and is also happening in some other places. Though the world is still dominated by the unhappy ones and people like my father still couldn’t feel the presence of the happy ones. I guess he should’ve been born in the 1980s and couldn’t afford a house at 33 to do so :-)
Good Health & Bad Memory 