Have you been considered exceptional?
Or do you think you are an exception?
There’s always an exception in everything. Especially in every big picture of a society.
I am always intrigued by certain findings in polls or surveys. There have been numerous “researches” that indicate, for example, people of my age in the country I live in:
• hardly walk
• hardly read books
• hardly exercise.
Meanwhile, as I look around, or perhaps as I stumble across social media feeds of people I know, I see them running (be it for “status updates”), reading (be it for “status updates”), and exercising (be it for “status updates”, but why wasting sweat for just as such?) in various locations.
Of course it is easy to say that I do walk, read, exercise and not being asked in surveys. But if the surveys and polls indicate that they present great pictures of how a society is and does, then we shall wonder on who were surveyed? How these surveyed people represent people at large? And if we do not see ourselves in the surveys, are we all exceptional exceptions?
Sometimes, I could not help wondering about these ‘anomalies’.
We often tend to see a whole society from these big-picture perception. Or, labels.
I used to think, unfairly, that majority of Colombians must be involved in illegal drug business. I fail to zoom in possibility that there must be artists, literary thespians, professors in the country, and definitely religious professionals not involved in dirty politics.
People often think that Indonesians are not well-versed in literature. I am often amused to see number of books stacked in bookstores in Indonesian, and writers keep coming up to prominence every year.
I used to think that all people in Western countries are sophisticated. That is until I realize that wherever in the world, richness and poverty go together, literacy and illiteracy go together, different choices of life and in life do happen.
Sometimes I also wonder, there must be a fellow cinephile in Zimbabwe, or a fellow avid reader of English books in Papua New Guinea. I have not met them yet.
My wondering sometimes extends to the possibility if these exceptions to the ‘presumptive big picture’ has to live based on the ordinary norm of their present surrounding. Maybe that’s the case here, and everywhere else.
We can only wonder and ponder.
Nauval Yazid & His Words. 