If you make a thousand paper cranes, your dream will come true and you’ll find happiness. I think this is an allusion to being punctilious, that your happiness and dream will come true after an episode of hardship. And I think Cassius Handoyo tried to communicate this very message in his film “Burung-Burung Kertas.”

And by showing the extent of things people will do in the name of love, I personally commend this movie as an interesting thing to watch, despite of the superb and meticulously-detailed-yet-dramatically-astonishing cinematography offered. And to think this is a low-budget movie… I wish Indonesia is filled with this kind of creative people.

If we think about the things you’d do for love, I guess it’s almost a miracle to have this certain thing called love inside our life. In the said movie, you’ll see that love is about making someone you care about feels happy, more than anything else. This is a very simple thing to think, but not an easy thing to live.

So let’s take it that there’s always this someone whose happiness you romantically care about more than anyone else in the world. It should always be taken into account that you don’t really hold any obligations or any moral responsibility over anyone’s feelings. Emotion is a complex set of feelings, and happiness –as a certain emotion, could be defined as a pleasurable fulfillment of certain conditions that produced a certain set of feeling.

The question would lead to what’s pleasurable and what amount is sufficient to produce the expected fulfillment. And a fool could tell that it varies over people depending on their personal culture. A quantitative approach on it would be cost-benefit ratio, when there’s a surplus of benefit compared to the cost for the involved parties, then theoretically speaking, it would be pleasurable enough.

But really, I personally would question the motivation to care for someone’s happiness. Surely, it could produce a certain amount of happiness for you when you see your loved one is happy, but why doing it in the first place? If you really wished for your happiness, don’t you think it’s better to do things that would make you happy? Would there be any greater happiness when your loved one is happy? I don’t think it’s quite true.

I remembered a discussion with Ruli. He argued that happiness could be seen as a form of investment, which in the long run would be more profitable. When you make someone happy, you invest in them that, ethically, when you’re in need of happiness then they’ll return the investment with interest and other bonuses that could be seen as their investment on you. And I don’t quite follow the logic in it.

Perhaps it’s quite true that relationship is more like a lifetime investment which interest would be a lifetime companionship and sorts. And I also have said that, when you put everything into a relationship, you’ll do everything possible to make it work because the stake is just too high when the bridge is finally burnt. In this perspective, it’s just illogical to do all the things you’d do for love, since the risk would be greater. But this is just an intermediary hypothesis.

I seriously believe that all the time and energy you could spend for the hardships you’d do for love could be spent better by doing things you like, things that you know would please you all the most. In other words, between dating a potential candidate and playing games, I would certainly prefer playing games because of the low risk and the low cost, compared to the potential –which implies uncertainty, benefits whatsoever.

Then Ruli argued that it’s about having the optimum cost for maximum benefit, and he stressed that it’s about having the best bargain for the best possible outcome. Unlike him, I don’t haggle and I don’t like it so much I’d better paying higher price than doing it. But logically, let’s stress at the word potential. It’s all potential and it’s all uncertain. I don’t really care much for uncertainty, since I believe human mind is naturally constructed to adapt with changes and cope through uncertainty.

But, the word /potential/ itself connotes of /probability/. There’s always a certain probability whether things would go as planned or not. There’s always a probability whether random fuck ups would compromise the plan or would it support the plan. Probabilities everywhere, people. Even after I studied extrapolation, triangulation and other mathematical operations to predict a certain outcome based on an observable indicators, it just doesn’t work with individuals. It might work for a society, under a strictly measured condition, but it somehow just doesn’t work with individual human being.

Most of the time, /potential/ also implies a certain extent of capacity –or capabilities. And I don’t really believe this. It’s either you go all out with whatever limited resource you have, or you don’t go at all. It’s everything or nothing. As I’ve said earlier, the higher the stake, the more effort you’ll do to keeps it going. When there’s no predictable and possibly achievable outcome of a certain action, else than experimentation, there’s just no logical reason to do it.

Then I remembered that I’m making a digital illustration for someone, and I intend to give it as a present for her birthday. All right, it might seem like I’m doing an irrational thing, but I do it because of several reasons. First, I’m learning digital illustration; second, her divine face is motivating enough to keep me going; and third, I’m practicing this to ensure the growth of my future career as a digital illustrator.

You see, I’m doing this seemingly altruistic thing, without any hope to finally end my life with her, because of myself and my own deliberation. I don’t really care whether she likes it or not, I’m doing this simply for myself. Thus, I can’t understand why someone would do things for the benefit of others.

So I’m a genuine cynic and egoist. And though I love Cicero’s summum bonum philosophy, I love the actualization of myself even more. I mean, you can’t really please others unless you please yourself first. Whatever I do, I do it mostly for myself. If someone is somewhat happy because of it, that’s an unexpected yet welcomed implication. And if it made someone somewhat sad, then it’s an unexpected and ignorable implication.

Then you might say that it’s my moral obligation to concern if someone’s sad because of me. As a reply, I would remind you that one’s happiness is one’s sole responsibility. It’s already an absurd thing to associate your happiness with someone else, but it’s highly irrational to associate it with someone’s actions. People are just irrational. Could you, seriously, trust another to take care of your life? If the answer is yes, then I guess you’re one of the reasons this world is so fucked up.

Inspired by Cassius Handoyo’s “Burung-Burung Kertas.”