The scent of rubber tree sap had been smelled since I was still on the plane. Not with my sense of smell, but with all my feelings. My whole heart had inhaled the scent of the hamlet covered in hundreds of hectares of rubber forest. My heart also heard the sound of tree trunks being cut, followed by drops of rubber sap that sounded soft but like a heavenly song for the receiver. When the plane took off towards Medan, I surrendered my thoughts to that place. The hamlet that began a series of terrible events in my life.

I always put my heart to sleep on the plane, letting the people around me chat, do light activities in their respective seats and interact with the flight attendants. Some passengers are asleep, and I choose to sleep with my daydreams. I direct my gaze out the window, and wrestle with the silence there. I enjoy the quiet but warm moments like this. I prepare a passage in my heart to welcome the memories that will dance and dance even more when the plane lands soon.

Throughout that, the sky then turned into a foothold for my thoughts. I poured out all the shadows of my life there. Since I was still crawling and the villagers called me ono-lakhambanua. A widow’s child. Until I took to the skies in a plane and have embraced experiences that I never imagined would happen in my life. Sometimes, I feel like life is a series of surprises that will test the mental strength of humans. I have been at critical points as a boy who continues to grow into adulthood.

Landing in Medan, the flight continued to Gunungsitoli. A point where I would be increasingly carried away by the pounding emotions. Usually I would no longer be able to interact with anyone, because my emotions had become one with everything I saw. And, that was indeed what happened. I don’t know, every time I return to my village, I always feel like this. I passed the flight from Medan to Gunungsitoli in a stinging silence. My feelings were wet. My heart always sobbed. I did not conclude it as sadness. I felt it more as emotion. I never thought life would change like this.

And, the most dramatic part every time I go home is when the rental car takes me rolling from Gunungsitoli airport to Alasa sub-district. A small dot in Nias. You probably won’t find it on the map. It’s so remote.

The journey will continue on foot, struggling through deep mud to a hamlet that is so far from the highway and does not know the roar of cars. Ononamölö Tumula Hamlet. 12 kilometers from Alasa. That is the village where I was born. It is at a point that cannot be read on any map of Sumatra. A hidden hamlet that is peaceful in its isolation. Cornered but has a whole world, which feels enough for its residents. I grew up there. A quiet hamlet from the reach of the world but warmed by the embrace of nature and the smiles of the natives.

The car ride to Alasa made the shadow in my mind find its true face. Everything I saw confirmed that history. My memory allied with the scenery and produced piercing memories. Feelings of sadness, emotion, happiness, pain, joy, alternately emerged and played their roles. I just let my mind free. This is indeed a ritual of feelings that I can’t get rid of every time I go home. An original feeling that can only land when I get closer to my village.

The road I took was crisscrossed with rubber plantations. Most of the people in Nias live from rubber forests. The aroma of rubber is so distinctive. A fragrance that I always miss and creates a warm smile in my hometown. The residents grapple with rubber plantations for a fairly large income, and vegetable fields to fulfill their daily needs. They believe in nature as a true friend to survive. They protect and care for nature so that the same love radiates from the fields, rice fields, and vast rubber forests. Until the day I arrived, they still ate from the interaction of their hands and rubber tapping tools in those forests. They made a promise to live and die with nature.

The scent of the rubber forest accompanied my journey to Alasa. I knew that in a few hours after that, I would no longer be able to hold back the tears in my eyes. I had often traveled by vehicle from Gunungsitoli to Alasa. But walking from Alasa to Ononamölö Tumula always made me cry. It was as if I could still see my footsteps from my childhood. When I had to walk all day on difficult terrain, covering a distance of dozens of kilometers, to be able to find a fairly good school. At that time I was barefoot, wearing very simple clothes, and a cheap backpack that had been weathered by the heat and rain. My hair was the only shade. I felt the heat of the sun on my scalp at midday, and the cold rain seeped into the pores of my head.

Now I am wearing neat trousers, wearing a shirt that I bought in Jakarta, a fairly good leather bag containing a laptop and gadgets. In the bag there is also an iPad that records my travel schedule as a motivational speaker, leadership coacj and culture consultant. For almost ten years I have traveled around Indonesia and abroad. I gave training in various companies and motivated hundreds of thousands of people. It was a truly touching flashback. And I almost couldn’t believe it.

I don’t have to walk as far as I used to. Development has made it possible for cars to traverse most areas, leaving only a short walk. In two hours, my village can be reached. I experienced that time slowly so that every inch of distance would seep into my senses.

There were not many differences that I found there. Decades after I left the village and crossed the terrible life in Jakarta and Australia, my village was still very modest. Some areas did not have electricity. Small children still went to schools with dirt floors. Women carried machetes and worked on their gardens alone, because most men had harder responsibilities in the forest. Many girls still chose to get married quickly and get a new life without having to work hard to make dreams for the future. Young people pinned their dreams on the borders of the village. They still lived in the old face, even though the cities had grown and changed their appearance. I often felt sad for that.

The end of my journey home finally arrived.

After walking for about two hours, I began to see the houses of the residents that I knew very well. That was the Ononamölö hamlet. The shape and density of the houses had not changed since I left this hamlet. The cool air that slipped through the thick rubber trees was still as fresh as before. I also faintly heard the sound of the gurgling river where I bathed with my village friends. I could still hear the chirping of birds that produced a very distinctive peaceful sensation. This was all original beauty. Pure.

I kept walking. I let the white sneakers I was wearing get soaked in the wet soil, creating soft lumps on the bottom of my shoes. I was happy with how nature here welcomed me.

Now I arrived at a hill. On the left side of the hill, my grandmother lay resting forever. Yes, I remember. The grandmother who took care of us when we were little. When my father died, I was only nine months old. My mother, whom I call Ina, had to struggle to raise six children. If it wasn’t for my grandmother who took care of us at that time, I don’t know what would have happened.

Slowly I went down the hill, then jumped over the ditch, entered the path, towards Hilizolouõ. Then the hut appeared… the hut that gave me blood and breath. Ina was there almost every day while she worked on the garden in the hut area. She only returned to her simple house when it was getting dark. My mother did not want to end her life history in the hut, even though we had said that the hut was no longer suitable for her to live in. For Ina, the hut was a monument to her life. She did not interpret it as a trace of suffering.

The face then appeared. Faint. Coming from the thick trees with abundant branches that covered part of the hut. I stopped. Standing still for a moment, looking at the thin body wrapped in simple clothes, the thin face with a high nose with very beautiful eyes. Ina. The woman who occupies the deepest space in my heart. She looked at me peacefully. She looked calm. But emotional happiness radiated sharply from her eyes.

I ran. Hugged her tightly. Very tightly. This was the climax of every journey home. When I had inhaled Ina’s scent and hugged her with great longing, that was what home meant to me. And I always felt like I was retracing my life. Ina’s embrace always whispered something certain.

“You’re back, son…” Ina cried.

My story was born from the desire to open my feelings. Telling my secrets that I know will be a mirror for many young people. But also for parents or anyone who is losing hope and has a very stressful life struggle. In the last twenty years I have experienced a life that I never imagined. Being able to study and live in the land of Kangaroos. Working in Jakarta and then becoming a Motivational speaker who is invited abroad. I provide sales training and leadership coaching for hundreds of national and multinational companies, teach thousands of people, and write best-selling book that has been printed many times. Maybe that doesn’t sound like something great. But it’s quite extraordinary if you know how I lived as a child.

My story is not just about the journey full of struggle from someone who is poor to become established in Jakarta. It is not that simple. My story is about the struggle of humans who try to get out of life’s difficulties and understand the meaning of miracles and gratitude. For decades I have been haunted by the question of why some people are lucky and successful, and why some are down and thrown into helplessness.

Many of us have extraordinary life paths that provide surprises, events that bring change, and miracles that fly in the realm of luck. There are also those who are continuously hit by tests, and feel like life is moving backwards. We all have different patterns of life movement from each other. My life records three important milestones, a difficult childhood, adolescence that is truly filled with miracles, and a youth that is faced with many tough challenges. In those three times, I alternately faced good values ​​and the grin of bad temptations.

As a boy who was full of suffering in childhood, I tried to find out how humans can find meaning in their lives. And God created a very powerful scenario so that I could get the answer to that. He created miracles, at the same time He also rolled out tests. I flew above luck and downfall.

I was born and spent my childhood in this Ononamölö hamlet. A place where the highest dream was if God would continue to let us live with enough food and not get seriously ill. I, my brothers, and my village friends were not people who were blessed with the luxury of being able to think critically. We didn’t have time to be critical. We had to think about our fate that day, every day we had.

But my life is truly miraculous. A pair of invisible hands came to us when life was at its peak. The miracle that I concluded as the “hand of God” has bewitched my fate in such a way. From a village child who was very backward and had chicken claws when going to school to a young person who was able to go to college in Australia. From a small child who lacked self-confidence because he was ostracized as a widow’s child, the fourth wife of a village elder who had no good fortune, to Eloy Zalukhu, a best-selling author who was invited to speak abroad. My life is like a dream. Yes, I am one of the many poor children in remote parts of Indonesia who are helped by people with extra-sensitive feelings who are moved to pull us out of the valley of poverty. There are quite a lot of good people like that and they move inconspicuously, individually or through NGOs. I, and my siblings were helped by an American who of his own accord has sent so many poor Indonesian children, from various tribes and religions, to school.

Although I was helped by God’s hand through a truly good person, so that I could study abroad, I went through a very winding life. I was lucky to be able to study at a good school in Jakarta, get a beautiful boarding house, experience a life that I never imagined since I was a child in Ononamölõ. But on the other hand, I also fell into a series of mental weaknesses of a boy in digesting life. I had childhood traumas that made me not fully see luck as a place of gratitude.

In this new life from extraordinary help, I once plunged myself into a dark life. Juvenile delinquency, extreme relationships, going through a very twisted love life, experiencing stabs of depression that almost made me commit suicide.

I went through years that I never recognized as life. I considered it torture. I once did not believe in God, and used up all my brainpower to only think badly. My life was very dry.

But the waves of bad events then brought me to a plateau that really slammed me into consciousness. Why did I treat my own life like that? I finally found enlightenment. I got a great longing to immediately become a man who appreciates life. After going through very bad years, I was so thirsty to digest the series of experiences I had. I read books on philosophy, psychology, and those related to spirituality. I fixed my lifestyle, I worked hard. I stumbled upon three big questions: Who is a human? Why are we born here, on this planet earth? And where do we go after death?

I found a realization that flew me into a life of pure peace. Not wealth. Not glory. But peace of mind. I think there are many people who have been in a condition like mine. Confused about digesting life and letting ourselves be carried away by the currents of life that ironically we do not recognize at all. We want to be destroyed there, we want to be thrown around there, we want to be tossed around in the scorching waves. Let alone having the will to achieve our dreams, we don’t even know where we are going.

This deadlock is not only felt by those who are poor. Many of those who are successful and rich are also trapped in the uncertainty of feelings. I know some of them. They look happy but feel a sharp emptiness. Today, I am sure, many people are trapped in a life that confuses them. Dark. No light. I have been in that darkness, and now I have begun to taste the light.

For me, life is not about how high we can fly in an adventure. But how capable we are of landing afterward. Many say, men are born to challenge the world. But I can say that a real man is also one who can return from an adventure with a definite answer. That life is a gift, something that must be accounted for with hard work and gratitude.

My story is about how we find the meaning of happiness, success and the true meaning of life.