Get distracted by side-events or non-elemental aspects of a game is always disastrous for a soccer team, particularly for a striker or a goal-keeper when facing the ball in the foot or in front of the goal-keeper. Stickers should forget anything and everything else, and focus only on the “ball”, when they are in the field, and particularly the ball is already in their foot. Goal-keepers also do that, they anticipate anything and everything that can happen with the ball, and focus on the ball itself rather than the striker himself.
Concentration and focus become key elements in a soccer-player when it comes to the point where the player must decide at what second and with what move he should strike to score.
Just imagine if a striker and goal-keeper start complaining about how one of his colleagues performed in the field and began demanding that fellow player to perform better or follow the way he wants him to play. Imagine when the ball is already on the strikers’ foot, but the goal keeper is still complaining about his friend who miss-kicked the ball a few minutes before.
Many West Papuans are just doing the opposite of what we should be doing right now. We are now engaged in our own internal battles, unnecessary battles to do with who should lead our organisation, who should hold particular positions within the ULMWP (United Liberation Movement for West Papua), not on what we should do with the “ball: in our feed right now.
Many West Papuan political activists today need to learn what is the meaning of our lives and the meaning of West Papua Papua independence struggle, and set aside “egoism” both personal ego and group ego, as this life that we have is too short to deal with too many side-events and unsubstantiated issues. And more importantly, we do not have a second life for coming back to continue and complete the struggle. We only have one life, and this one life is very short one. So we have to do something meaningful for our beloved motherland in this short time.
And more important of all, the ball is on our feet, it is now the time to strike, to watch so that Indonesia does not strike and score a goal in Melanesian countries, defeating Melanesian integrity as free people and undermining Melanesian sovereignty as a human race.
If we always wander around and thinking about how to satisfy our personal and group ego within West Papuans ourselves, then we should not claim ourselves as fighting for West Papua.We should declare ourselves fighting for our own self-fulfillment and self-realization. There is nothing wrong with this choice, however, the problem arises when we declare ourselves fighting for a free and independent West Papua, but we spend our time and energy in doing the something else, and worse doing just the opposite: hindering the struggle for freedom and independence.
From Central HQ of the West Papua Revolutionary Army (WPRA) we encourage all parties to humble ourselves, set aside our personal and group ego, and focus on how to fight against Indonesian occupation and colonialism. Let us forget talking about other fellow Melanesians. We are not enemies. We are just different, by the way we think, by the way we want to carry out our work to free our country. We are born into different territories and tribes, grew up with different surroundings and environments, but we should all agree upon one thing: We all experienced that the presence of Indonesia is deadly. We all agree that Indonesia should get out from West Papua. We all agree that we should fight them out, not by asking them, not by begging them, but by fighting, by demanding, by pushing them out.
We can work from our one identity, one mission and one destiny. We still have the power of people behind us. Only when we forget about our personal and group egos, we will deliver what we are supposed to deliver: a free and independent West Papua, and today, to ensure West Papua become full member of the MSG, a member of PIF and West Papua is listed under the UN Decolonization List.
That is the ball, and the ball is in our feet today. Let us focus on “the ball”, not the side-events, let us forget what is outside the field, let us humble ourselves and surrender to God, and let Him do His will though us.
