Di dunia ini manusia bukan berduyun-duyun lahir dan berduyun-duyun pula kembali pulang. Seorang-seorang mereka datang. Seorang-seorang mereka pergi. Dan yang belum pergi dengan cemas-cemas menunggu saat nyawanya terbang entah ke mana.
In this life, it’s not as if we’re born by the dozen and go home in a crowd.
One by one we come.
One by one we go.And those of us still left anxiously await that moment when our souls will take flight and go – who knows where?
Pramoedya Ananta Toer – Bukan Pasar Malam [It’s Not a Night Market]; own translation.*
Buena Vista
Your organisation is not a social club (unless it’s actually a social club).
Your organisation is not a counselling centre (unless that’s what you do).
It’s not a retreat, or a place for rehabilitation, or rest (see above).
And yet
And yet, having said that… it probably is, sort of.
And it probably sort of should be.
So it’s worth asking yourself, as you go about your work:
“How does what I’m doing make people unlonely? How could it?”**
What does it, what could it do for you and the people you work alongside: for your colleagues and employees and their families, for the organisation’s friends and champions, and for the people you seek to serve?
Consider how you spend your time day to day, and how you encourage others to spend theirs.
*Own translation: a pretty liberal one with a shift in perspective
**And on the flipside: “How does what I’m doing create or contribute to a feeling of loneliness – and how could it not?”