Last performance review cycle, I got a "barely meets expectations"—something I could've avoided if I slept with my VP, but I liked to believe I had an unshakeable moral ground. I wouldn't be too sad ... [+]
What a packed schedule I have had this year. My last stop today is in the aftermath of violent protests. There are so many names here that are on my list.
Just two days ago, these streets still had recognizable buildings. Parliament had not been torched. Now, the roads are lined with rubble and memorial candles. Those who remain come and go. I stay for the routine political eulogies. I stay for the flags flown at half-mast. The new leaders call them courageous after the fact. They speak of sacrifice, of rebuilding. Some cheers are heard in the crowd.
Even under the somber atmosphere, the speakers still have to give some recognition of the success. I do not get to witness success often. Change has begun; A phoenix emerging from all the fires started and still being cleaned up. The process feels inevitable; how many lives in exchange for just the chance of a blank slate? In all my years of work, the stakes have never been any different. This pyrrhic victory could not have happened any other way.
In a recent wake that I attended in Indonesia, the deceased approached me in his work uniform. His face was in the papers and his name was inked and his story was immortalized online. He meekly asked me what I thought his life was worth up to the point.
I shrugged. His body had fed the ravenous news cycle. It was an accident at the right time. One that enraged and mobilized and reverberated across the country. Wide-eyed and earnest, he asked me before he left, just as many before him have done. His youth was showing. Could I have done more, speaking as if it were up to him. There was no table to play at, no say in the matter.
Last week, I was sent to this familiar mountain peak to wait for a woman to pass. Like many before her, she would soon join the snow-covered bodies that she had stepped over on her journey to this point. How long did life take to carve that faraway look in her eyes, staring out to the distance? That hardened gaze ended here. What a pity that the weather was not even good that day; The views were obscured by clouds. Her hands had pushed weakly against the ground. Where she had laid, the peak was in sight. She told me later I really wanted to summit.
It baffles me every time. It was just a mountain. No one would have faulted her if she did not climb it. No one would have despised her for investing her time into easier things. Every time, I can recognize the same ego that pushes them to move their feet forward. That is not to say that I understood it in the slightest.
The crowd is dispersing now. The grieving families slowly return to their emptier homes. Some of the departed tell me on their way out: At least I died for something. There is something comical about the fact that in another life, that choice would not have been theirs to make. To gamble with their futures and the futures of their fellow men. To bet against history and the systems that made them.
Usually, I am only present to see humans when they fail. Sometimes they ask me, Was it even worth it to try? I do not have the heart to tell them that it does not matter. At least not to me. When the bell tolls and I usher them away, I hope their souls find peace in the realization that there is no shame in dying for nothing. It happens all the time.
Today is one of those special occasions: I get to witness humans who stand to reap the benefits of their gamble, surviving a transient event with the greatest prize of all: Getting to start all over again.
I will watch them, as always, with their quiet persistence of life, pretending it can last longer this time. I will watch them try to live their visions of potential.
Their coarse skin: warmed by sunrises, radiating heat and feeling what ambition means in biological terms. Their trembling hands: for grasping at straws, for fighting for causes they believed could outlast them. Their shaking voices: for uncertainty, for confession - whispering softly to the mirror that surely it could be better than this.
All this effort to risk the status quo for nothing certain - to prove themselves, to no one in particular.