Everything is Fine

There is a short story in which a little boy has to answer the question ‘What do you want to become when you grow up’ as a school assignment. His answer is simply the word ‘Happy’. When the teachers tell him that he did not understand the assignment, he argues that the teacher does not understand life. To be honest, I always hated the story and I still think that it belongs to a MySpace profile of a mediocre teenager, rather than to the introduction part of any piece in any newspaper, especially the CEU Weekly and especially anything written by… well, me.

The truth is that I started to relate to the little boy in the story. It begun back in Hungary, as a response to the question ‘What on earth do you want to do in Indonesia for a whole year?’, and it gradually became much more apparent when I had to face the ‘What on earth are you doing there?’ questions.

When I was first asked to write something about my stay in Indonesia, I had a lot of ideas. I am full of funny stories, stories that make you think, and unexpected fun facts about life and people in East Java. Maybe in the next issue I will write some of those things, and the next piece will have hats of Boyolali policemen in the title. But not this time. Why? I took my time (something I have a lot of here) and looked back on myself one year ago in the beginning of April. I was a wreck. Honestly, CEU got on my nerves: I spent most of my time in the library or home alone, full of panic and self-loathing. I could not deal with pressure – mostly imagined pressure. My social life dropped dead, I couldn’t sleep well... and although my world did not revolve around CEU during the last twelve months, I know most of you will be able to relate to at least some of these symptoms. It sucks.

Now, after spending seven months on various islands in the Indonesian archipelago, I am actively being happy. While learning the language, riding more than 15 000 kilometers on a motorcycle and making friends from around the world, I learned a great deal about how I should be living. It is now clear to me that I had my priorities wrong: I should have enjoyed these experiences first, and gone to CEU after. But this is not the message that I want to tell you this time. I want to tell you that everything is fine, and is going to be fine. The world is full of wonderful people and they are right there around you – don’t miss the opportunity to have the good times with them.  It turns out that the teenagers on MySpace and the motivational chain emails were right after all (well, at least when you are looking at it from this little bubble that is heaven on earth Indonesia).

Do I know what I want to be when I grow up? Hell yes! I want to remain exactly what I am right now – happy.

Wow, this looks kind of pretentious. I think my old self would just start worrying about what people will think about him after reading this :)

The author is participating in the Darmasiswa Indonesia program, writes a blog in Hungarian (indormation.wordpress.com), gave up drinking (kind of), and sometimes talks about himself in third person.

Tamás György,

CEU Alumnus and former Managing Editor at The CEU Weekly