The universe is indifferent. We are on our own.
— Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, writer, and public intellectual best known for his work explaining evolution and advocating for science-based thinking.
ON our paddy farm several miles from our village in Serian District — about 40 miles from Kuching — my father had this charming little evening hobby: he’d sit by a flickering bonfire outside our hut, smoke a hand-rolled cigarette, and stare up at the stars like they’d promised him a clear explanation of life and then failed to deliver. Again!
These were the years I grew up in, the 1950s into the 1960s, when everything smelled of smoke, damp earth, and the kind of hard work that makes you sleep like a stone, whether or not you’ve solved the mysteries of existence.
Most nights, he didn’t say much. He’d settle into his homemade seat-contraption — saplings tied together with rattan strips, a masterpiece of rural engineering and mild discomfort — and prop his feet on a cut-off log like he was some grand gentleman of the frontier. That is, if you ignored the mosquitoes and the fact that the “frontier” was basically mud, paddy, and dense jungle.
But some evenings, we could tell his mind was going somewhere. Not with anything practical, mind you. Not with “how do we keep rats out of the rice” or “how do we fix the roof before the next downpour”. No.
He was thinking about the big questions — the kind that neither helps anything grow, fixes what’s broken, nor puts food on the table; the kind that sits in the head and rots, like an old coconut or an overripe papaya.
My mother always knew. She would glance at him once — the way you look at a pot that’s beginning to boil over — and then quietly move elsewhere to carry on with her chores.
She didn’t announce it. She didn’t fuss. She just got on with her own thing, because you don’t interrupt a man who’s about to argue with the universe, even if the universe has a terrible track record of turning up.
None of us children understood what our father was struggling with internally. We only knew there were two versions of Father: the one who worked, ate, and slept like other people and the one who sat outside at night as if he’d been personally offended by the concept of existence.
For additional context, you have to understand: my father wasn’t some learned scholar, educated in fancy schools, reading thick books and sipping tea while discussing philosophy.
His education came from village night classes — roughly the equivalent of Primary Two in formal school. Two! As in: he could read a bit, write a bit, count enough to know when someone was cheating him, and that was that.
This, frankly, should have protected him from thinking too much.
But no!
He thought a bit too much; asked too many questions that he or his friends couldn’t answer.
Sometimes he’d sit there in the firelight beneath the star-studded sky, cigarette glowing, tuak (rice wine) in a bamboo cup, and mutter to the night as if he expected the darkness to apologise.
“What is the meaning of all this?” he’d say. The more the tuak, the more the questions, and the more mumbled they were.
Then he’d fall silent. Not a thoughtful silence, either — more like the silence of someone waiting for a reply that isn’t coming. He’d sip the tuak slowly, carefully, as if it was part of a ritual agreed upon by his ancestors and whatever spirits were loitering in the jungle.
The bonfire would crackle — the smoke and flames throwing shadows on the hut wall — while insects would carry on with their noisy business.
Somewhere out in the dark fields, frogs would fill the night with their croaky conversations.
And Father would be there, one man versus everything.
Eventually, he’d start again.
“See the jungle there?” he’d say, pointing at the dark mass of trees beyond the firelight. “It does not care about us.”
Then his hand would drift towards the fields, the paddy stretching out into the night like a damp, silent blanket.
“And those fields? Uncaring. We are like ants, running around, pretending we are special.”
Now, as a boy, I didn’t appreciate being compared to ants. Ants were tiny. Ants got squashed. Ants didn’t get to have opinions. Also, ants didn’t have fathers who made them feel strangely existential when they were supposed to be thinking about school or fishing or, I don’t know, literally anything else.
So, I did what children do: I took it personally.
I remember thinking, ‘Why is he saying that?’ We’re people, humans. We have names. We have feelings. We have … Well, we have rice, at least. That must count for something.
And I was confused by the idea that the jungle and the fields were supposed to care. They were just there. They surrounded us as the air does. You don’t go around expecting the air to care about you. You hope it doesn’t suddenly disappear, and then you get on with your day.
The jungle was simply the jungle: dense, breathing, and full of life you could hear but rarely see. It offered no comfort and made no effort to soften itself for those who passed through it. There was no face to read — no gesture of sympathy — only the constant murmur of unseen creatures and the weight of its presence pressing in from all sides.
The fields, meanwhile, were just fields: muddy, practical, and quietly unyielding. They existed to be worked, not to care. Their soil clung to our feet, their demands were steady, and they carried on regardless of how anyone felt.
They didn’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh dear! I hope the family in the hut is feeling emotionally supported today.’
Nor did they offer reassurance when the day grew heavy.
Both jungle and field remained exactly as they were — indifferent, reliable in their own way, and entirely untouched by human concern.
So, when Father said they didn’t care, I thought, “Well … obviously? Why would they?”
To me, it sounded like grumbling. Adult grumbling! The sort of thing adults do when they’re tired or irritated; when life isn’t going exactly as they planned, or when they’ve had a bit too much tuak and decided the stars seemed to be judgmental.
But even then, young as I was, I had a vague sense that it meant something to him.
He wasn’t the kind of man who talked for nothing. Words cost effort, and he didn’t spend effort on nonsense unless the nonsense was bugging and haunting him.
In moments when my mind was clearer than usual, I realised that when he called us ants, he wasn’t mocking or trying to be cruel. He was trying to place us properly in the world. In his mind, we were small and temporary and busy, forever scurrying about with our little plans, convinced we mattered to the grand shape of things.
Which, if you think about it, is a very insulting way to describe human life. Also, an annoyingly accurate one.
Years later — much later — I understood what he meant. Not because I became wiser in some heroic, noble way, but because life has a way of dragging you to the same conclusions whether you like it or not. You don’t even need tuak. You just need time. If necessary, you can add a roaring fire.
Sarawak was not waiting for our great contributions. We were too small, too insignificant. And the world was definitely not holding its breath for a boy from a paddy farm to do something impressive.
The jungle would continue to grow, indifferent and patient. The rivers would flow whether we succeeded or failed. The earth would spin happily on, not pausing even for a second to ask if we’d sorted ourselves out.
And this is the bit that’s supposed to make you feel hopeless, I think. The bit where you stare into the vast, uncaring universe and realise you’re not the main character.
It can be quite rude, really.
But here’s the thing I learnt — and I suspect my father learned it too, one bonfire evening at a time. The fact that the jungle doesn’t care isn’t an insult. It’s just the truth. And the truth, while inconvenient, is strangely freeing.
If the universe doesn’t owe you answers, then you can stop begging it for explanations. If the fields don’t care about your dreams, you can still plant rice. If the jungle doesn’t notice your worries, it also doesn’t judge your failures. It simply is. And you simply are.
You work, you laugh when you can; you drink tuak from a bamboo cup because you’re tired and it tastes like home, and you sit with people you love even when you don’t have words for what’s inside you.
That’s not nothing.
So yes, Father was right. We are small. We are temporary. We are, in many ways, like ants — busy, stubborn little creatures hauling our burdens through the mud, convinced our tiny loads matter.
And maybe they do, in the only way that counts.
Not to the jungle. Not to the fields. Not to the stars.
But to each other, by the fire, in the quiet space between one question and the next.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at hayhenlin@gmail.com.
