Who
am I? How do I get here?
These two ostensibly simple questions never
really come out as trivial as it sounds. Somewhat it is what defines
who we are today. This means our history. For me, these questions
will always get me trace back to the first time I could freely
inhaled my first air in this world. It would be a real long story,
seriously; from the moment when they granted me the name Alia Arsy
Arya Arga, to the journey of my wild high school times.
First
of all, you probably get attracted to my full name. My parents had
deliberately set all A’s as the initial four letters of each part
of my full name. Weird, eh? Well, my creative Dad once admitted that
he was mostly the one who took charge of its bizarreness. Yet beyond
its oddity, Mom and Dad had enclosed some hope and prayers in it. The
terminology of my first name, ‘Alia’, comes from an Arabic word
means honored. My Dad told me that he formerly got the inspiration of my first name from
a great airplane named Alia, when he first saw it landed on Halim
Perdana Kusuma Airport. It turned out that the plane was a Jordanian
Queen’s whose name is Alia as well. So yeah, basically, my Dad
named me after the Jordanian’s first lady. The next one is my
middle name. ‘Arsy’ is also an Arabic word that refers to the
throne of God. Whereas ‘Arya’ is a word originated from Javanese
which generally means a knight. The last but not least, my surname,
‘Arga’, is the Javanese word of mountain.
As
if this overrated full name is not enough, my Dad had ever mentioned
his secret intention of choosing my last name. I was like, ‘Wait..what?
Seriously, Dad, this can’t be more intimidating…’. Oh, yes,
girl, it can. Have you ever heard of Jayabaya’s prophecy? It’s an
old Javanese prophecy that foretold if Indonesia would become a
prosperous country someday. Maybe this is the first time you hear it,
so let me explain. The prophecy said that Indonesia would be a great
country someday with one condition: once it has already had been
reigned by 5 Presidents whose last syllable of surnames met the
requirement of ‘NaTaNaGaRa’. Can you get what I’m just saying?
Because frankly I’m having a bit difficulty explaining this too,
but I hope you guys could grasp what I mean. Carry on, so the last
syllable of my last name is ‘Ga’. The point is, my Dad was
secretly hoping that his daughter could possibly fulfill the fourth
syllable of the prophecy. This also presumably means then, that he
had already carefully calculated the time in which his daughter’s
age would be appropriate to be a President. Gracious. I feel that
this is pretty heavy.
Well,
initially, I can’t deny that I felt so intimidated by my parents’
highly idealist hopes of me, by which represents through the meaning of my name.
Fortunately, during the last year of my high school period—when I was so
bewildered with the sophistication of the school and, to which path
should I lay my feet on afterwards—my Dad reminded me again about
the meaning of my name. Here came the moment when I was contemplating
of my next step. Apparently, that time I got a revelation from my own full name. So this is a sort of unifying my parents’ hopes and prayers
plus my love of language and culture: I have decided to be an
Ambassadress in the future. I should apologize to my Dad later, since I'd rather choose to be an ambassadress instead of a president—sorry, Dad. To sum up, this whole story of my name,
in some way, is what guides me to this place, to my first choice—English Department,
Universitas Gadjah Mada. Therefore, thank you, Mom, thank you, Dad. I
feel inspired. I feel grateful. I feel glad. And I feel blessed.
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