Friday, 12 September 2025
“Aku suka nih yg kayak gini, banyak insightsnya,” my husband said when he read my post the other day, the one titled Living Light Without Decision Fatigue.
I grinned, because honestly, I liked that piece too. It felt like my brain finally had the space to stretch and walk around barefoot. Writing something that goes beyond daily events, something with depth, with meaning, always feels nourishing for me.
But here’s the thing: the everyday stories matter too. Without them, I’d forget so many details. Like how I remember exactly that my surgery was on August 15, simply because I wrote it down here. But now, when I’m trying to recall when the itchy spots on my hands and feet first appeared, my memory fails me. Why? Because I didn’t write it. That’s the price of not documenting.
So maybe my new strategy is to keep writing my deeper reflections and sprinkle in some bullet points or short lists of daily happenings. Just little markers, like breadcrumbs back to a memory.
The only problem is, being an INFJ, I can’t help but search for meaning in everything. Even the tiniest event feels like it deserves interpretation. And there you go... I’m trapped in my own head again, trying to weave threads where maybe none exist. Complicated, huh?
Tonight, my husband and I drove our daughter from her dorm to the airport. She’s off to Toraja with her school friends. She had so many bags (the curse of being in charge of PIC purchasing!) that the luggage couldn’t even fit in the trunk. We ended up stuffing some onto the back seat.
Thank God three of her male group members swoop in to help push the overloaded trolley. Then I saw other parents pitching in: one dad helping to tape a flimsy box, another mom sharing last-minute tips on the WhatsApp group. It was noisy, chaotic, but warm.
And as I stood there in the crowd at Terminal 3, I noticed how alive the place felt. Dozens of teenagers buzzing with excitement, ready to scatter across Indonesia from Papua to Toraja, serving communities for a week. Their parents chatting in clusters, cameras flashing, trolleys squeaking. It was like a giant festival of good intentions.
And here’s my confession: I felt a little envy. Not the bitter kind, but the wistful kind. Like, “Wow, what if I had this kind of opportunity when I was their age?” To be in a school that encourages service, surrounded by like-minded friends, doing something meaningful together. Isn’t that the stuff of good teenage movies? Except this was real life, right in front of me.
Of course, life has its way of redirecting us. I may not have had that at 17, but I have other opportunities now, like raising a child who does. Sometimes the gift isn’t getting to experience it firsthand, but being the witness, the cheerleader, the one who hugs the child at the departure gate.
Anyway, after all the goodbyes and hugs, I was starving. My dream of slurping down Bakso Afung at the airport vanished, because by the time I got there, every outlet had already closed. Hungry and disappointed, I dragged my husband to find another option, and thankfully Bakso Eyang saved the night.
Somewhere between meatballs and noodles, we started talking about Burger Bangor (hubby's guilty pleasure) and somehow we ended up joking about buying a franchise for my boarding house in Benhil. Entrepreneurs can never eat in peace; everything is a potential business plan.
But here’s the point. (Yes, I promise I have one.)
Life doesn’t always hand us big defining moments. Most of the time, it gives us itchy hands, crowded airports, meatball hunts, and random business ideas over dinner. The problem is that we often dismiss these “small” things as unimportant. We tell ourselves we’ll only remember the surgeries, the graduations, the birthdays. But memory researchers say otherwise.
Studies show that autobiographical memory is built more on the accumulation of ordinary details than on rare milestones. Psychologists call this the “reminiscence bump”. We tend to recall everyday events from certain life periods with surprising clarity, especially if we’ve recorded them somehow. Journaling, for instance, is proven to improve memory recall and emotional well-being. One study from the University of Texas even found that expressive writing helps regulate immune function and reduces stress. Imagine that: our scribbles actually heal us.
But if you’re wired like me (hi fellow INFJs), here’s the danger: over-analyzing. Every itch, every conversation, every half-eaten bakso could turn into a 2,000-word essay about the meaning of existence. That’s both our gift and our curse. The trick, I think, is to balance. To allow ourselves to write down the mundane without always attaching a moral of the story. Sometimes a noodle is just a noodle.
Still, I can’t help but see wisdom tucked into these moments. Like tonight, when I saw my daughter’s friends rushing to help with her heavy trolley. I thought of an African proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It reminded me that even in small moments... at an airport, with tape and trolleys... community makes everything lighter.
So maybe that’s my takeaway for now. Document life. Not just the big milestones but the itchy skin, the missed bakso, the kids with too many bags, the WhatsApp group full of parents trading tips. Write it down. Not because every entry needs to be profound, but because one day, when memory fades, these fragments will bring us back to who we were.
And if along the way, meaning sneaks in between the lines (like it usually does for us INFJs) then that’s just a bonus. Just don’t wait for the big moments to write your story. Capture the little ones too. They are the threads that quietly weave the bigger picture.