Goodbye Suharto

Finally, Pak Harto passed away. Like we never know when the dry leave is going to fall down. Now, tommorow or the day after tommorrow? That is our guess to a person that has possibility to die is often wrong. But whenever our mind is redirected to something else, our prediction happen. Pak Harto has gone. Suddenly a mix feeling fullfill my heart, perhaps it is also supported by the media and his obituary ilustration in television. It’s something weird. Weird because when he was still alive many people accused him to responsible for many crimes against the human rights. But, as human being, there is also feeling of lost. Now, he is no more alive, he has gone.
Talking about the mix feeling, hatred-anger-lost- or even normal feeling, I was intersted to hear the response of Widji Thukul’s wife. He was a poet that became one of the New Orde ‘victim’ in the 1998, since he shouted against unjustice through his poems. He was kindapped and until now it is never clear where he is. Asked by a reporter from one of private television, about the death of Pak Harto, this humble wife replied, “God himself is a forgiver, why can’t I forgive him? (Pak Harto),” she almost cried saying this. Wow, is that big a power of forgiveness that she gave? One more thing, she doesn’t want to take revenge because of the past because revenge is not good for herself. Imagine that…the poweer of forgiveness.

Choosing not to take revenge is like an ilustration when we bring potatoes in a plastic bag and bring them all the time with us. What will happen next is that those potatoes will slowly decomposed and sting comes out from ourselves!That is what happen if we keep the hatred within, when we can’t forgive somebody. It’s really not cool to keep a plastic full of decomposed potatoes along wherever we go.