Another Victoria's Secrets

via savingadvice

"Considerate" is a quite new word to my dictionary, since my best friend's been talking about it for the past year. She's been discussing about being considerate with her boyfriend, having their personalities completely different; having one of them always being inconsiderate. I'm not gonna talk about their relationship/personality. Let's just talk about being considerate.

But what is "considerate", actually?
The dictionary said it's being "careful not to cause inconvenience or hurt to others."

So. It's all about thinking in other people's shoes, to consider their feelings, to see things from their perspective. Doesn't sound so hard, does it? Apparently, so many people fail to do this. It might not be in the first lessons we learn in school, but mostly we could learn from home, from our parents and neighborhood.

via boardofwisdom

Although the word may be "new" to me, the meaning isn't so new. I've always thought it's because I'm a Pisces (water element) that I was born a pro in being considerate. But then again, there are lots of other Pisceans that are inconsiderate. It's just me, probably. So maybe it's from one of the initial lessons I got from my childhood.

As far back as I could remember, my parents didn't really taught me that literally by saying "you must be considerate bla bla bla..." Instead they showed me, and I copied them. But then again, it's all in the scriptures. If your religion is Abrahamic, you should've read the Bible, right? (which should be compulsory in both Christianity and Islam.)

The Bible wrote so many verses about considerate actually:

• "Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31, NIV)
• "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves." (Romans 15:1, NIV)
• "On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”" (Romans 12:20, NIV)
• "No one should seek their own good, but the good of others." (1 Corinthians 10:24, NIV)
• "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31, NIV)
• "A man reaps what he sows." (Galatians 6:7, NIV) 
• "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." (Philippians 2:3-4, NIV)
• "Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." (Philippians 4:5, NIV)
• "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds," (Hebrews 10:24, NIV)
• "You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone." (James 2:24, NIV)
• "Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness." (James 3:18, NIV)
• "If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them." (James 4:17, NIV)
• ... and sooo many others you can find in the Bible.

via quoteaddicts

And below is my favorite poem "Do Good Anyway" from the world's beloved Catholic nun Mother Teresa:

via quoteaddicts

I always thought that consideration is what makes us human. I've been taught that our purpose in life is how we interact with the others, what we give to the society, how we make the world a better place (if the world is too big, we can scale it down to our neighborhood/family first). "We treat others as how we want to be treated" has been taught in the Bible and the more famous phrase is "We reap what we sow" (Gal 6:7-9). In Hinduism, it's called "the law of karma". I guess it's taught in (almost) all religions.

So it really is disturbing for me to see how inconsiderate a person can be, regardless their religion. Well, it's not for religious purpose anyway. It's should be a basic in all human's common sense. It's human. It should come naturally. But at least that's what I thought. As I grow up I found it's curious, if not disturbing, how people can be so inconsiderate among the others.

I was a bit annoyed when my friend's boyfriend said that she was inconsiderate because she was Indonesian--as if being inconsiderate is a typical Indonesian. But now, in 2016, I sadly realized that most Indonesian people I know are indeed being so inconsiderate. I could talk all day about inconsideration in Indonesian politics (which is a hot topic this year) but I prefer to avoid politics. Now that we see the fact, how can we make the world more considerate?

	via yimg

It really isn't hard, being considerate. We simply have to respect people, do to them what we want them to do to us, and be concern to their feelings/needs. We must remember that every our little word/action will make an impact on them; so we must make the impact a positive one. If it's all too hard for you to do, you can start by stopping yourself from saying anything negative. Always try to find at least one good thing about the others.



I don't want to be the only one who's being too considerate in the world of inconsiderate people. I know I'm the one who feels too much, when I shouldn't. But being considerate shouldn't be one person's job. We are all born different--each one of us; but if we can start being more considerate to each other, on the smallest scale, in the smallest circle--can you imagine how great this world will be?


I guess it's better to just fix ourselves into a more compassionate person than to worry about other people's inconsideration or hoping for them to ever change--because it's simply exhausting and useless.. So now let's start a new "me" in 2017: keep being considerate and loving, just for the sake of our own inner peace and our value in God's eyes.

Happy new year!

I know it's kind of late but it's still 2016 so allow me to say:
May the jolly festive season raises our spirit to welcome the new coming year.

I didn't go home for Christmas last year, so I do this year. I came to Jakarta last Wednesday and when I got home I found that Mom had decorated the house with Christmas ornaments. It won't be close to our old house in Awiligar, but at least there's a glimpse of joyful holiday atmosphere in the barren Serpong area. Well at least we tried. I just love the warmth of red and green colors that adds the festivity to even the humblest home.

Here's how our home situation for Christmas 2016:

me, Adit, Dita, Damar just arriving with our welcome drinks

Actually I didn't really want to post this elephant tour stuff because I had to lose a friend because of this. He was being very cynical about me posting pics with the elephant on Instagram because he thinks it's a torture for the poor animal. I actually considering his thoughts about exploiting the elephants and stuff but I don't appreciate his way to quip me on his account instead of telling the matter right on to my face (so much of a man huh).

Anyway: If you're one of those who think that elephant tour shouldn't be done in the first place, if you really want to make a change, please protest straight to the tour facility, raise an awareness, fight for a cause, or make yourself heard in any other proper way instead of sulking around on people. If you think it's important for your friends not to support such thing, please tell them right away--if you consider them your friend. They'd accept any input/critic as long as it's a right thing, is positive and delivered with good deed. Don't satirize and dramatize things because it would just make yourself lose friend(s) due to such 'heroic' act of yours.. And by what I saw, the elephants here weren't being tortured. They could eat and do things they seem to enjoy. If I saw the tamer being hard on them I wouldn't agree with them and told them on the spot.

group selfie before we go home

We left the facility at around 5 p.m. and carried home with us the whole new experience. It was really fun and you should consider especially for the rafting experience. The water is clean, not perfectly white but a little brownish (perhaps because of the rain) but the whole rafting journey was indeed cool and you just have to try it yourself.

Contact the Bakas Levi Adventure here for information and bookings.

via youthministry

Is it even a term, 'losing friends'? I suppose I didn't have the term in my dictionary when I was a kid, but the life after 30 seems to offer different things. During the past 5 years I've lost at least 3 of my close friends; two of them are both Aries girls who had shared some great years as my best friends since we were 16 until 30, and the last one is a boy from school who happens to live in Bali now and with whom I had some great adventure together. Alas, I had to cut my friendship with them due to certain circumstances.

To me friendship is a relationship where the two persons share the same interest/value and make an equal effort to be of use for each other. If there's only a person who makes the effort while the other is taking advantage, or talking of the other behind their backs, or is simply selfish; it's not a friendship after all. And for me it matters most, for both parties to give at least an effort for the friendship to work out and last.

I've heard or read somewhere that in life we have limited 'seats' for closest people around us. If we have new friend, we must lose an old one. Something like that, I'm not sure. But the thing is, people change. We all change. We learn, we grow, we adapt, we thrive. Those who fail to catch up should be left behind because we have our own pace. Well I guess that's how life works in social aspect.

On this BBN Community site, the reasons we are losing friends are because:

1. You don’t tolerate insincerity anymore 
As we grow older and wiser, we stop ignoring faults and incompatibilities with the people in our lives, we start to lose patience for insincere and false friends. We learn that “quality over quantity” applies to friendships too. You’d rather have a genuine and sincere conversation with a good friend rather than put up a front and be with superficial people. 

2. You’ve got less time 
With age comes responsibility and lack of time, socializing generally takes a back seat. When this happens, we start to value our free time and realize that wasting it on friends whose company we don’t really enjoy anymore is not an option. Spending our limited free time with people who we like and who matter is far more important and rewarding. 

3. Your friendships deepened with time 
The friends who stuck around through the bad and not only the good have seemed to stay in your life. As we get older the “fare weather friends” start to disappear. Our deeper bonds and connections hold and we stop looking for more as we start to see who our real friends are. And those bonds just keep getting stronger! 

4. You’ve got more experience on your back 
We all need a friend to provide support sometimes, and as you grow older you start to see who you can rely on! This helps you see who’s worth keeping and who isn’t, and it’s more than likely the list of friends who you can really rely on isn’t a very long one!


I guess that's true. We filter friends as we grow up because we get to know ourselves much better; those who are no longer in tune with us will be sorted out no matter how. It is actually sad for me to have to lose friends. But being a Pisces, I'm the person who cares too much that I'm easily fall into negative aura and I really don't need more drama in my life.. That's why I cut some friends off (and I guess another one to be cut soon). Maybe we need to do that at one point in life. We all want to live in peace, harmony and more positivity after all.