What is next for you?

by Rifki Ardisha (Indonesia)

A leap into the unknown Indonesia

Even months before my graduation, almost everyone bombarded me with the same question. “So what is next for you?” I could tell them a lie and say that I already have a job waiting for me or something along the lines. But to be truthfully honest, I still have no idea where to go. I felt lost, and a tad bit disappointed that my degree does not come with a guide on how to lead a beautiful, wondrous lives. Right in that moment, I recalled something my mother told me. “Being lost is not always as bad as staying on track,” she told me so, on our way to the longest road trip we have ever taken, three years ago. The plan was to go to the furthest point on Javanese island before coming back home to Jakarta the week after. It sounds like a solid plan, but my mother is the ‘wing it, go with the flow’ kind of woman that she basically does not plan for anything, nor write down list for places to be seen, or even book any hotels and to someone that usually has his whole day or week planned out, this was a recipe for disaster. I tried to be the organisers but she will not let me, assuring that we will not get lost. But God indeed has a sense of humour because the next thing that happened is that we do get lost, yet in the best way possible. On the fourth day of our road trip, an accident occurred right in the middle of a junction, causing miles and miles of traffic jam, somewhere in eastern Java in the middle of the night. A minivan was struck by a locomotive and the number of casualty was unknown. We were stuck for more than two hours before finally a young man tapped on our window and informed us of an alternative route. I was not sure about it but my mother trusted him right away. He drew us a map on a used receipt and wished us luck. “Think of it as an adventure,” says my mother. After a three minutes of small arguments, I decided to follow through as I had no passion on staying on that road any longer. As we followed the instantly drew map, the roads were getting smaller. There were no cars ahead of us nor behind, which got me worried that we would find ourselves inside the young man’s trap. Our headlights were the only source of lights. All sorts of scenarios were already running around my head when the roads suddenly opened up, and ahead of us was this vast, blinking paddy fields. I did not expect to find such view. The moon and the stars were laying around, unsupervised. The whole scene on the ground mimics exactly what was painted above. It was also so quiet, I thought the winds were dancing in our ear. It was like staring onto a reflection; a river and a pond, a mother and her son. After some good fifteen minutes, we finally reached a bigger road. Road that was paved on the hill right next to a cliff. There, hanging in the middle of the sea, was a humongous factory. The machine was screaming, channeling her Joan Jett persona. The lights were warm, yellow-ish and bright, like a horde of fireflies. It was like a theme park but more polluted and running on its own. It was scary, but familiar, like those man-made giants you saw on cartoons as a kid. Later on, my mother let out her favourite slogan of ‘I told you so’ and honestly, I was not even mad. Eventually, we managed to reached the furthest point of Java but that moment of being in the unknown, is still definitely the highlight of our road trips. Being lost is not always as bad as staying on track, because sometimes it is even better. Which is why, the next person that asks me ‘what is next for you?’, though still feeling a little lost and unsure, I would probably say, “I don’t know. Carribean, perhaps?”