The Penultimate Rut

"Between the cup you empty and the same cup refilled," wrote Fernando Pessoa, "who knows whether your fortune won’t interpose the abyss?"

I am of the same mind with this Portuguese writer. Yet, if I can plan my life at all so as to live as planned, I wish to spend my old age in a quiet. Notions of living such by a seaside or mountain I have somehow set aside of late, for reasons that need no mention.

By or on top of a hill is probably better, where I'll be able to write my next books--or at least some posts for a new blog titled: Once Upon a Hill; wait… Once Upon a Hill®, there.) Our daughter, well, by then she will have had a life of her own; anytime she wishes to see her mother, she can drop by, or we can go visit her once in a while when the harvesting season is done.

Call it a back-to-nature craving. To one who is no good planner such as I am, it is more a dream, the kind I want to have when awake. A simple wish that really isn't, especially when viewed from the circumstances I am in right now. It is no less authentic, though not unique, since many must so aspire, too. In my case, the chance for success is slightly leveraged because my wife is a meticulous planner.

The urge to realize the pastoral fantasy becomes stronger and stronger every day with the amount of air pollution one inhales and the accompanying noise, particularly when I find myself stuck in the traffic jam on the way to work. Like most Jakartans I have to spend almost 2 hours to work and more or less the same amount for homecoming. I must admit it does not look like a very blessed living, but that's what we Jakartans must tolerate, not excluding those who walk to work.

No matter who we are, ladies or gentlemen, fancy car owners or borrowed-car drivers, motorists or pedestrians, recalcitrant bus drivers or most-dedicated police officers; and no matter our status: married or single, pious or secular, rich or poor, everyone living in our part of the world will be as trapped in this rut most mornings and afternoons as canned sardines except that we are not yet dead.

True, Jakarta is still the best to make money in the country, but it is the only best among the worst, and non-Jakartans deciding on job offers in this city must seriously take this traffic factor into account. Here is a place where being good drivers and experienced pedestrians does not count, because they get outnumbered by the ignorant. The capital city, which will elect its new governor next year, has been a great model of a city of failure. And believe me, this is only a fact. I never mean this post as an insult or self pity; it simply is a factual situation--or a case where only bad karma is being put at work.

I have been beating around the bush, and I suspect your suspicion about it has developed.

Actually, this post is neither about romantic poetry, old age luxuries, driving skills, nor solutions to indictable Jakarta's traffic jams; it's, rather, about corruption (henceforth: "It"), something elusive many have wanted to write about but could not for fear of only stating the obvious.

All that I dare say at this juncture is that the horrifying traffic condition of Jakarta can be used to remind everybody of one great empiric tale-tell of the social cost that many of us knowingly or otherwise imposed upon ourselves. Traffic jams are inundating everyone regardless of the fact that some of us are good users of thoroughfares. Moral suasions or ethical solutions have been used and repeated, without efficacy and many among us keep wondering why.

Now comes the main thrust: things are no different with It in this country. My hipothesis is as follows: to know about the state of It in any country, one only needs to feel one's general welfare in rush hours. The infrastructure and suprastructure of a country's traffic order and the behavior of its people on thoroughfares very much typify those in other spectrums in life.

The nature of It, however, is more covert, subtle, and chronic if compared to that of traffic congestion. As a Jakartan myself, with utter conviction I can so testify. The effect has been here to stay. Few among us, no doubt, have tried to live day by day avoiding all types of It. But to the people at large, cases perhaps need to be discovered and pinpointed that illustrate how devastating the effect of It is to everybody. (For this, economic modelling won't suffice; ethical and religious perspectives not enough. It must logically be of multi perspectives, kept simple but moving.)

The penultimate rut in which It eventually chastises everyone is far worse and more paralyzing than Jakarta's congestion, but it is not as visible or revealing.

I hope that justifies my meandering.