Mom

As my coach’s chalk started shrieking on the blackboard, my mind started wandering off. The destination of my daydream was still somewhat within the scope of the motion, of the debate. My thoughts floated to sometime in my past years, somewhere I can’t pinpoint exactly, perhaps it was a mush of everytime this topic had crossed my mind.

With ‘TH (This House), as 2 atheist parents, raising their child in a homogenous religious rural community (e.g. in Texas) W (would) raise their child to be religious’ written as the motion for today’s practice, I started thinking of Sheldon Cooper. He was the exact opposite of what the motion was telling us. And I’ve always seen a piece of myself in him. Not completely, of course. He turned atheist when raised in a christian household, in a predominantly christian neighborhood, city, state, and country. I turned atheist when raised in a catholic house, in a predominantly muslim neighborhood, city, state, and country.

But we both turned out to be nonconformists.

Mom had put me in catholic schools all my life (I still am in one as I’m typing this) with the hope that my faith would take roots alongside a disciplined nature (to which I can testify now that I had only managed to gain the latter). I believe it’s textbook example of a gated community when the label of a faith is plastered in every creak of the institution, as if giving warnings for those that don’t belong to not come close.

Or is that just proof of what skewed headspace it raises you in?

Anyways.

As I grew up, I also noticed some things. The grand painting of mom in my head, she had tainted herself with the remarks she would utter almost under her breath. Those remarks would then trigger my conscience, to snap a finger near my heartstrings, leaving a slight shiver to my body; my mom had harbored a certain dislike of the majority that she had veiled and only revealed in the silence of our home. A distinct type of displease—that I was shocked to learn pretty much the next day to have been pretty common across the board—from actor A towards actor B, and vice versa. It's ironic that the conscience she had worked hard to instill in me was also the one to make me realize her harmful biases. But for humans to disagree, and go against each other, is no new event in the length of our history. We’ve always been divided, and for most of our time here, those frictions had smeared dark red on the canvas of our history.

But my mom is a peace-holding person by nature, so she never took much action to her words, those that belong in that nature, at least. So I never do either with my new perception of her. But the older I get, the more I try to disassociate myself from her belief. And out of my unending love for her, the more I also try (and struggle) to reason out and rationalize her stance. I don't condone nor validate it, of course. I cannot, when I say love is love, when I say to make love not war.

Some repetitive hypotheses I then started conjuring up in my head; 1) she's a minority, 2) she's a minority, 3) she's a minority.

Alongside her peaceful nature, my mom is also a conformist by the bones. The first daughter yet the last of four kids, left to defend herself amongst her three brothers, I understand how she would grow to habituate succumbing to the majority, to mimic a sheep following the collective herd. But this herd is not one that she agrees upon, this herd is not one that protects her, this herd is not one she sees herself belonging to, this herd that surrounds her in every direction yet she never felt at home in, as she is a catholic.

Thus she developed this awkward non-conforming shield. But isn't this the same shield that has pitted humans against each other for millennias, the same justification, used time and time again? Fueling a never ending chain of hatred.

***

‘As team Government, I would take the motion to the direction of conformity and what it provides; safety and a sense of belonging. As team Opposition, I would point out and analyze the harms of conformity, of what comes with standing on an island built on the pressure to join the spiritually mainstream...’

Ah, no.

“The justification for your stance as Government would be very shaky don't you think? What about religious freedom then? Why must it be inferior to safety and a sense of belonging, especially in a constitutionally secular state? Why can't we ‘revolt’ and/or be part of a new movement? One that pushes for solidarity, for harmony, and for peace of all. Way too rebuttable.” I can already picturize my coach’s response to it. Yeah, what about the fight for religious freedom, Nadine?

Well, to start with, a secular state doesn't automatically mean perfect secularism in real life. Status quo always, to a degree, differs from what that is on paper. But if we contextualize this condition into our current status quo, especially here in Indonesia, yes it should be something that we are actively focusing and working on bridging, exactly because our status quo isn't as ideal as what's written on the constitution. We have advanced enough to stop engaging in segregationist activities, ideas or state of mind. It comes as a legal obligation to strive for interfaith harmony as we have progressed this far as a civilization and as we stomp our way to the future.

And with that, I need to stop tolerating my mom's whispers, I need to stop it leaking to the rest of the family, I need to stop the circle from my nearest radius. That's the least I could do. That is to stop becoming a blind sheep in this hateful herd.