A Heart Filled With Anxiety

Kompas

Jakob Oetama.

The passing of Jakob Oetama has left various impressions, praises and memories. Besides all the reminiscences, an absorbing story is still overlooked, which is about Jakob Oetama as a man of faith.

In the individuality of Jakob Oetama, faith was not established but was in the grip of anxiety and put to the test amid all his human frailties. From his struggle with his faith, we can notice a true story about the compassion of Allah. Based on the compassion of all-forgiving Allah, Jakob experienced and discovered his foundations of struggle and his transcendental humanism accountability. Being acquainted with Jakob Oetama’s personality is less complete without his story of faith.

To his son, Irwan Oetama, Jakob once conveyed his view more or less as follows. Kompas is the field of God. This field is not mine. I only work as God’s worker. So, what I earn from my work should be distributed as widely as possible to those working together with me. Only when there’s some left over can I enjoy it. The faith he was convinced of was not mere talk. The hard work in the field of God has proven to generate welfare for those working in the KG (Kompas-Gramedia) group, which he founded along with Petrus Kanisius Ojong.

Also read: The Legacy of Jakob Oetama

As the KG made progress and grew bigger, Jakob certainly became wealthy. However, with his wealth he remained a modest personality. Indeed, as a former Kompas journalist, Thomas Pudjo, once said, wealth was not Jakob’s target of life: wealth was just the fruit coming out of his modesty. The fact of wealth that turned into a blessing for fellow workers seems to have been a concrete manifestation of the truth of words he had faith in: Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.

A journalist’s pilgrimage

Jakob was rich, but his very unassuming behavior and appearance indicated that he could never enjoy his wealth. Even as far as I knew him, his was always feeling anxious. In the innermost seat of his heart Jakob seemed to experience the cry of Saint Augustine: Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te (My heart is restless until it rests in Thee).

Jakob was actually always anxious. His anxiety was not in the sense of being dejected. He was anxious because his faith prompted him not to ever feel established in his life. He remained anxious as long as Kompas had not yet really become a reliable newspaper, one that was capable of contributing to the nation’s development and intellectual promotion. He felt anxious as long as his employees had not yet enjoyed welfare as he desired.

Still, his anxiety not only involved his duty, work and achievements, but also his private life and emotion. The anxiety was painful, because it was there that, as experienced by Augustine, the holy man who had been sinful, Jakob felt he was troubled by his human frailties. Why did the bright achievements have to appear amid frailties?

Such frailties turned out to demand him to remain humble, aware of his position, show empathy toward the weaknesses of fellow humans just amid the great achievements he secured.

Why should a very important person be plagued by frailties? Or is it just because he was a VIP so he had to suffer frailties? Said Augustine: my joys are not worth a laughing response, but rather a crying one. Only Jakob knew how he was crying in his heart while rounds of applause were praising all his achievements. Such frailties turned out to demand him to remain humble, aware of his position, show empathy toward the weaknesses of fellow humans just amid the great achievements he secured. In the frailties lay hidden his pearl of humanism.

Also read: “I am a Journalist”

His anxiety was persistent. Only when he passed on forever could he fulfill his longing at the end of life: requiescat in te; resting entirely in Thee. As he was always anxious, Jakob led his life as a pilgrimage journey. Jakob’s pilgrimage was not a journey to holy and exalted places. Jakob went on a pilgrimage as a journalist, who had to be prepared to go to a world filled with winding roads that were not always straight and smooth. They were roads of darkness, occasionally making him unaware of where God actually was.

KOMPAS/HARIS FIRDAUS

A statue that resembles Jakob Oetama is displayed at the Yakopan Market event at Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta, on Wednesday (17/9/2014).

While working with Kompas, I myself felt how tough the journey was. It wasn’t easy for people to maintain the purity of their lives on the way. Here along with Jakob, Swantoro and other fellow journalists, we all experienced falls, frailties, failures and faults. It lasted until later when I got the opportunity to give my first thanksgiving party in the editorial office with piles of newspapers and I said: Kompas has provided many things for me to become a writer and journalist, but above all for me, Kompas is a school of sins.

Jakob was very pleased with the term school of sins, because it also formulated his life experience. For him in fact the school of sins was not a mere place to commit sins, but also a place where as humans who were journalists, we all enjoyed the great blessing, compassion and mercy of Allah, so that we could really feel the truth of the words of Saint Paul: ubi autem abundavit peccatum, superabundavit gratia, where sins increase, grace becomes abundant. Yes, along with Jakob, in Kompas we experienced what Pope Francis is convinced of: Even the worst of sins, the compassion and forgiveness of Allah are always stronger than the pain of our failings.

With the falls, failures and sins in this school of sins, Jakob with us all reached maturity without becoming hypocrites. In this way, we could feel the words of Jesus in a truly existential manner: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

We remained silent and felt that we were also sinful like the woman brought and judged by the Pharisees, the hypocritical scribes, for having been caught in adultery.

The feeling of not being proud of great achievements as humans are beset by flaws was the journalistic basis of Jakob Oetama, who didn’t want to judge or charge. His journalism avoids lambasting or condemning. It’s journalism presented with moderation, the principle maintaining that even truth should be conveyed in an elegant and gentle fashion, instead of alleging strongly, as if we alone were true. This moderation principle should strive for justice.

Also read: Working with Heart

Yet the principle asserts that the sincere readiness to forgive is a value no less treasured than justice. Jakob’s journalism in fact is not hostile. Owing to the moderation principle, Jakob had a lot of friends.

Fragments of failures

Jakob was never proud of his successes as he felt the frailties and falls being faced as a human. He was hurt and had no idea why it had to happen. Nonetheless, as Augustine put it, he underwent the pain of sensum vulneris, the wound in the innermost depth of his heart. God himself caused the wound in his heart. So, there was nobody capable of healing the wound except God himself.

Likewise, if humans could not accept the wound, God would always accept and heal it because He himself had caused it and, therefore, He was the only one capable of healing it.

The heart He purposely pierced to cause the wound inevitably took him to God for healing and forgiveness. Likewise, if humans could not accept the wound, God would always accept and heal it because He himself had caused it and, therefore, He was the only one capable of healing it.

The compassion and mercy of Allah were the mystery behind the transcendental humanism of Jakob Oetama. The humanism of Jakob Oetama is impossible to understand without the compassion and mercy of Allah accompanying it. That was why Jakob Oetama wanted his journalism to console the poor and warn the rich. In the eyes of Jakob, the poor as well as the rich are expecting the concrete compassion of Allah, so that the two should be mentioned and given attention at the same time.

The long journey of transcendental pilgrimage with the falls and failures led Jakob to his real understanding of the truth of faith as indicated by Catherine LaCugna ini: “The God who does not need nor care for the creature, or who is immune to our suffering, does not exist […] The God who keeps a ledger of our sins and failings, the divine policeman, does not exist. These are all false gods […] What we believe about God must match what is revealed of God in Scripture: God watches over the widow and the poor, God makes the rains fall on the just and unjust alike, God welcomes the stranger and embraces the enemy.”

KOMPAS/HASSANUDDIN ASSEGAFF

Jakob Oetama (right) and advocate Adnan Buyung Nasution attended the celebration of the 48th anniversary of the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, onTuesday (17/8/1993)  at the Legal Aid Institute Building, Diponegoro, Jakarta.

God of this kind makes no demand that we appear before Him perfectly without failings and sins. It’s just before Him that we may be present with ourselves being split in fragments of failures, breakdowns, shortcomings, faults and even our sins. Jakob obviously succeeded in setting up a whole and grand KG building. But amid the success, Jakob humbly always accepted that his life was composed of fragments of human frailties and weaknesses. When going to church, Jakob frequently sat on the back seat, feeling unworthy before God.

He wasn’t like a Pharisee, a scribe taking pride in his holy achievement before Allah, but rather he adopted the attitude of a tax collector who felt unworthy, so that he could only pray, “Oh Lord, have mercy on me a sinner”.

Jakob has passed on. His demise was the time when God himself compiled the fragments of life of Jakob into a compact whole. It was the time for God to embrace Jakob, just as God had thus far pierced the heart of Jakob to cause a wound that only He alone could heal it.

Tears of endless gratefulness

Jakob always shed his tears when relating the success of KG employees and his children who had become academicians, doctors, engineers and so forth. His tears were those of endless gratefulness. It may be because he felt he was completely undeserving of it and of no use, but why Allah had just chosen him to become a VIP, a personality useful for his employees, fellow workers, even the state and nation. He never understood why he had been expected to work in His field as a journalist who was able to found the Kompas daily, where he was allowed to report and manifest God’s works of safety in a concrete way.

Also read: Goodbye, Pak Jakob

Jakob patiently and painstakingly cultivated the Kompas field with water of harmony and unity. He always called the KG a Mini Indonesia. Amid all the threatening ambitions of social fragmentation and division for mutual exclusion, he always strived to make the KG a small island of unity that was operated and imbued with the sole spirit of unification.

In the KG, Jakob wished to realize the theology he had once learned, which was that of Santo Bonaventura about coincidentia oppositorum, meaning more or less: “Just because of the coincidence of opposing parties, the KG group can serve as the basis of true unity.” He wanted the KG to be a real model for the vigorous growth of the truth of this teaching of compassion, which is “either we are rescued together, or we are not rescued at all”.

KOMPAS/FERGANATA INDRA RIATMOKO

Sindhunata

Jakob Oetama has handed down various pearls of humanity, truth and practice in faith that are most valuable for everybody. These pearls were derived from and polished on the pilgrimage journey that was filled with anxiety. His anxiety has ended. Now he may feel peaceful and tranquil in the embrace of love of God, who always forgives and have mercy on all his frailties, weaknesses and failings. This is the time when Jakob can offer his prayer tonight in a happy mood: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, in Your hands, oh Lord, I surrender my life.

Sindhunata, Journalist