24
" One factor that makes human being reluctant to have hope is the fear of disappointment.
Do not be afraid of disappointment! The more you afraid of it, the smaller your expectation.
Face and overcome the disappointment, even though it felt bitter in soul and pain in body.
If you go through and pass it, then your soul and body will be stronger than previous level.
When hope emerged, change will occur because of that, both in your soul and in your body.
Fear of disapointment is a main enemy of good hope and great change within the human being.
Only by facing and overcoming the fear of disapointment, man will become stronger and wiser.
~
Salah satu faktor yang membuat manusia enggan untuk berharap adalah rasa takut akan kecewa.
Jangan takut dengan kekecewaan! Semakin engkau takut menghadapinya, semakin kecil pengharapanmu.
Hadapi dan lawanlah rasa kecewa, meskipun terasa pahit di jiwa dan terasa sakit di tubuh.
Jika engkau mampu dan lulus, maka jiwa dan tubuhmu akan lebih kuat dari kondisi sebelumnya.
Ketika harapan muncul, perubahan akan terjadi, baik dalam jiwa maupun dalam tubuh manusia.
Rasa takut akan kecewa adalah musuh utama pengharapan yang baik dan perubahan yang agung dalam diri manusia.
Hanya dengan menghadapi dan melalui rasa takut akan kecewa, seseorang dapat menjadi lebih kuat dan bijaksana. "
― Toba Beta , Master of Stupidity
25
" We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say so we represent that hour to ourselves as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time, it never occurs to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned, or may signify that death — or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again — may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon every hour of which has already been allotted to some occupation. You make a point of taking your drive every day so that in a month’s time you will have had the full benefit of the fresh air; you have hesitated over which cloak you will take, which cabman to call, you are in the cab, the whole day lies before you, short because you have to be at home early, as a friend is coming to see you; you hope that it will be as fine again to-morrow; and you have no suspicion that death, which has been making its way towards you along another plane, shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, has chosen precisely this day of all days to make its appearance, in a few minutes’ time, more or less, at the moment when the carriage has reached the Champs-Elysées. "
― Marcel Proust , The Guermantes Way
27
" A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. " Well," said the man, " I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. "
34
" You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was " designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow " timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity. "