to start, curate words.

menggubah // curate

Here is where we start — with words.

I’m not a creator. I created nothing, and honestly I don’t even need the pressure to live up to that in my life. I’m a writer, so I’m a curator of words. Not ideas — you can’t touch ideas — but words. I collect different ones, different shapes and shades, sizes and surfaces…pretty words I like. Then I put them together. Menggubah.

Arrange them, tend to them. Plant the seeds and help them grow into whatever they were meant to be, because to force them into anything else would be a complete waste of time and self-esteem. Cherish your words. Curate them.

And then let them go out into the world. It’s where they belong. It’s where they can grow beyond the pot you placed them in, with the rest of the world’s words and ideas.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

It’s where they’ve got work to do.

mengubah / change

And so do we. The opposite of change is not stillness (nothing is truly still in this world) but equilibrium. To bring into existence something, anything, into an environment invites change. Ripples or waves, it doesn’t even matter. It could not change anything when it was not there. Now, it is there and it has already changed something. Mengubah.

But it has also changed us. The curator is now a curator +1. You’ve unbalanced the equations, there is movement in the mind, stirrings in the soul and heart. Change.

Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash

But we’re not done.

menggugah / challenge

There are some that are asleep and must be shaken. There are some that are comfortable and must be disturbed. Menggugah.

Bricks turn into monuments, seeds turn into revived rainforests & ripples turn into revolutions. The writers, the changemakers, the activists. We are an unsatisfied lot. Tak puas hati. There is a dream and we must be awake to see it happen in our lifetimes.

Or we might not. It is not up to us. We simply challenge. We change. And we keep curating. Put it into the world and see what it can become.

Photo by Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash

Until our time runs out, we’ve got work to do.

(with credit & appreciation to Dr Har & her distilling of Hamka’s work into the three words: menggubah, mengubah & menggugah. semangat penulis & aktivis tak mengaku kalah.)