Tentang Mimpi, Literasi, dan Dunia Anak

All grown-ups were once children.. But only few of them remember it… What essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart one can see things rightly. (Antoine de Exupery)

Apapun yang terjadi, teruslah berlari mengejar mimpi. Seberat apapun langkahmu, jadikanlah Tuhan, satu yang kau tuju. Sekuat ombak di lautan. Sekeras karang di lautan. (Senandung Mimpi)

No worries, all is well. (Mama, whenever I fall)

I’m walking on a road of time, blown by a freezing breeze. Here, I’m searching for a ride of bliss. An eternity in life. (Me, 2010)

Sebenarnya saya baru saja membuka catatan coretan apapun tentang anak-anak. Pasalnya, saya sudah lama tidak menulis kisah flash fiction, cerpen, maupun cerita anak-anak. Padahal, ide membuka cerita inspiratif untuk anak-anak saya sendiri yang mengusulkan. Ternyata susah juga ya. Apalagi jika diri sendiri sedang krisis motivasi.

Sebenarnya banyak tulisan lampau yang sangat relevan tentang anak-anak. Dulu saya suka nulis cerpen, waktu SMP saya sempat mengumpulkan untuk Porseni. Judulnya apa ya, absurd, something with Langit Bintang tetap Bersinar apa gitu tentang gempa. Pas SMA pun saya masih suka nulis tentang anak-anak. Ya, Dusun Mimpi. Di luar tulisan itu adalah tulisan-tulisan random. Hiks. Jadi saya harus nulis apa ya untuk adik-adik? Baiklah saya akan mulai menulis.

Dear adik-adikku,
Masa kanak-kanak akan menjadi masa emas yang kau rindukan kelak di kemudian hari. Pastikan untuk belajar pada banyak hal. Ah terdengar klise. Jadi saya nulis apa ya buat mereka? Sejujurnya saya mau bilang, setiap orang dewasa akan bahagia melihat anak-anak karena mereka seperti melihat dirinya sendiri, seperti melihat binar-binar mimpi yang mungkin meredup bersinar kembali.

Ah sudah dululah. Menulis random. Literasi adalah apa yang membuat saya sampai di sini. Anak-anak adalah harapan, impian, dan masa depan. Oleh karenanya, setiap anak berhak untuk mendapatkan akses literasi. Dan, bahagia sekali bermimpi dan berkreasi bersama teman-teman Literacy Outreach Initiative (Love Project ID). Belajar dari adik-adik difabel yang begitu antusias belajar literasi. Putri yang bersuara emas, Aida yang suka mendongeng, Kuskus yang suka olahraga, Shofi yang kalem tapi saya tahu di dalam hatinya begitu kuat tekad, Pak Ahmad yang sungguh bertalenta dan berhati mulia, Bu Ambar bulik yang luar biasa tangguh.

Cuplikan cerita tentang mereka bisa dicek lini masa fanpage @LoveProjectID atau instagram @loveprojectid.

Oya, mari menulis untuk “Untaian Kata Inspirasi Anak Negeri” melalui link bit.ly/inspiratoranaknegeri dan merekam audio untuk pembuatan audio book massal yang akan didistribusikan ke SLB Yayasan Kesejahteraan Tunanetra Islam (Yaketunis) dalam “Nge-Audio Yuk!” dengan mengisi link berikut bit.ly/ngeaudioyuk

Terakhir, dalam post random ini, ada sebuah refleksi diri. Ketika saya menyaksikan mereka bermain peran dan bercerita tentang diri mereka, saya merasakan kesejukan dalam batin saya. Bagi saya, itu adalah soul remedy yang efektif. Tidakkah kita iri pada mereka, anak-anak yang terlahir atau kehilangan penglihatannya, kelak mereka akan terbebas dari siksa atas persaksian mata. Begitulah. Berinteraksi dengan mereka membuat saya belajar juga mereka sangat pandai membaca, membaca dengan mata hati. Bukankah kita yang punya mata sempurna (well, mata saya minus banyak sebenarnya), justru seringkali tidak memiliki mata hati?

Sekian, terima kasih, saya akan melanjutkan mencari inspirasi literasi. Bukankah setiap niat baik akan membuka jalan kebaikan? 🙂

 

 

 

Day Care (and Its Discontents): A Reading List

Well, until today, I would always wish that mother should be the first place for the care of the kids. As in this article, the sad stories and the drawbacks of child care are perhaps miserable. It is not only that outsourcing the provision of care for children in a family (esp. a mother) means that parents would not have the core competence to the development of their children, but also, it creates the unhealthy bod within the family.

This is a kind of outsourcing strategy that I have learnt, i.e. we transfer resources/tasks that are not the corporate (in this family) core competences to external parties. This reveals that the development pf the kids is not the core competence of family which is contrary to the vision of family. However, there are some burdens, in which both parents have their own careers. Thus, outsourcing to child day care is probably the option which in some ways create debatable arguments. Hopefully, though, mother is still the first madrasah for the children.

Longreads

Even the most self-congratulatory conversations about parenting young children are often tinged with an unmistakable air of guilt. Its source lies in a fundamental contradiction: We might be obsessed with our kids’ food, activities, and intellectual development, but in order to provide these things in the first place, many parents also need to outsource the feeding, playing, and teaching to people who are more or less strangers. We work; they go to day care.

Child care is a minefield of a topic, and navigating it inevitably detonates questions of class and gender, labor and social justice. It’s where politics and geography become not just personal, but also emotional (and, sometimes, heartbreaking). Here are eight stories about day care: a place working parents know all too well, but never quite well enough.

1. “The Hell of American Day Care.” (Jonathan Cohn, New Republic, April 14, 2013)

Cohn’s retelling of a fire…

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The Invisible Forces Behind All of Our Decision-Making

This is interesting, really interesting. I would love to have those books on my shelf-wishlist.

Longreads

Jessica Gross | Longreads | June 2016 | 16 minutes (4,137 words)

Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing atWharton, has spent more than 15 years investigating social influence. In his 2013 book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, he explains how and why certain products and ideas become massively popular. In his new book, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces the Shape Behavior, Berger focuses on the immense sway others have over the choices we make—whether we’re imitating or differentiating from them—often in ways we aren’t aware of.Berger and I spoke by phone about the often surprising findings he draws on in the book, the tension between fitting in and standing out, and how social influence can best be wielded.

How did you first become interested in studying social influence?

I’m from the D.C. area originally, and have a friend who’s a lawyer there. I was talking…

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Cultural Dynamism through The Age

Ceritanya kemarin saya membongkar memori komputer untuk megumpulkan portofolio tulisan yang pernah ditulis. Sayangnya nihil, tulisannya banyak yang tidak jelas hehe. Dan, saya kok baru ingat pernah menulis ini. Tulisan jaman mahasiswa dulu yang nganggur. Hmmmm blog ini sudah lama tidak di-update tulisan jadi share di sini saja. Mungkin ada yang menemukan sesuatu hikmah dari tulisan ini yang entah mau ngomong apa si penulis sebenarnya. Hehe.

Edward Burnett Tylor’s (1971), on his perspective of social anthropology in the UK, describes culture in the following way, “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole; which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

The philosophy of culture as a scientific process defines the specific character of society. Meanwhile, the nature of the existing culture is humanism itself. The popular thought by a classic Economist, Adam Smith in his legendary writing called Wealth of Nations, was previously enforced by his prior thought of social needs of becoming human by his Theory of Moral Sentiment. His two different writings show that there is a relevant connection between human beings as independent living organism who acquires freedom and achievement in life. On the other hand, human depends on other people, having the needs to interact and socialize. The interaction of society and environment creates values and tools, namely as culture.

A comprehensive scientific approach of culture was introduced by Daoed Joesoef, an artist and nationalist who once served as Minister of Education of Indonesia through his memoir Dia dan Aku.  Joesoef (2006) stated that the value of knowledge is wisdom. The wisdom finally enroots the soul of culture. Wisdom values goodness and moral ethics as a consequence of self-control and emotional harmony to be well balanced with sophisticated mind.

The Challenges and Opportunities of Cultural Dynamism

In this digital age, rapid cultural interactions come across the globe more frequently. Every human has characteristics and local wisdom. The message of wisdom is delivered through the media. The personal background becomes significant as it becomes cultural mission whether consciously or not, it is disseminated through the social media and received by the global society from various backgrounds.

Social interactions create the opportunity of cultural shock. Consequently, it could create conflicts. However, social interaction built in the name of mutual understanding will develop strong ties. As Kofi Annan-the former United Nations president said, “Arguing against globalization is like arguing against the law of gravity.” Difference is something certainly given. It is a gift that we can embrace in creating beautiful diversity and determining the values of wisdom. Understanding each other is the key to develop harmonized environment in order to embrace the difference and to encounter the threat of conflicts. Eventually, by mutual understanding, peace upon cultural differences can be achieved. There is this anonymous saying, a favorite one I found from Yayasan Bina Antarbudaya, “We love each other because we are similar. We learn from each other because we are different.”

Culture is as if our parents. We inherited our ancestors’ culture and wisdom as the babies born having the heritance in term of biological physics, genes, talent, and character. This is the origin of the diverse inheritance as it is to the nature of diverse culture. Thus, it is common to have differences among each other. All we need is to understand the nature and build the bridge of understanding to create positive communication through its dynamic nature.

Culture is a social asset of society. As a case study, Indonesia is an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands lie over the oceans. Bhinneka Tunggal Ika which means “unity in diversity” is the motto of the nation as it is home of various ethnics and cultures. Indonesian potential of culture also contributes to the economy of the state, mainly in creative industries and local tourism.  According to Indonesian’s statistical bureau, creative industries contribute 7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 9.5 percent of export in 2011. There are 7.5 million of people employed in this sector, mainly in the areas of fashion, crafts, advertising, design, architecture, broadcasting, publishing, music, and software development.

The creative industries and cultures face challenges in terms of competitiveness and sustainability. The challenge should be answered by the right strategy such as empowering bottom-up movement to preserve culture. The culture of volunteerism and community development has become a social trend. Social-driven projects emerge with youth as the main power. These typical bottom-up movements are great awakening movements in building rooted-massive awareness. This gives good signal to the development of society. However, there needs to be improvement, knowledge sharing, and good maintenance in its development through synergies of multiple parties related to the movements; i.e. government, private sector, and society in order to create sustainable harmony.

 

[Transkrip Indonesia] Siapkan Dirimu Menemui Tuhan – Muhammad Ali

:”

Nouman Ali Khan Indonesia

Muhammad, saya ingin bertanya. “Apa yang akan Anda lakukan setelah pensiun dari dunia tinju?”

Ketika saya pensiun dari tinju, saya sendiri juga tidak tahu, (tapi) saya ingin sampaikan sesuatu di sini, ini mungkin akan membuat kalian berpikir.

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[Transkrip Indonesia] Doa Nabi Sulaiman – Nouman Ali Khan – Malaysia Tour 2015

A’uudzubillaahi minasy syaithaanir rajiim(i). Qaala rabbighfir lii wa hab lii mulkan laa yanbaghii li’ahadin min ba’dii, innaka antal-wahhaab(u). Rabbisyrah lii shadrii, wa yassir lii a…

Source: [Transkrip Indonesia] Doa Nabi Sulaiman – Nouman Ali Khan – Malaysia Tour 2015