If asked about our favorite things, we can mention anything from our favorite niche musician to our favorite books, idols, or anything that makes our life a little bit better and brighter. Growing up and living our daily lives, we lean on those things to escape from our hectic yet draining school or work hours. We watch short videos, sing along to their songs, and put their faces on our phones as wallpaper or just… gushing over them – as if they’re our most prized possessions. They become little sparks in our lives — reminding us that joy doesn’t have to be big or complicated. A song could be one, the kind I looped until the melody settled under my skin, the kind I wore like a secret on long commutes and late-night scrolls. I would put their faces on my lock screen, save clips that made me laugh, and learn every pause, every breath in the chorus as if I’m memorizing a map back to a better day. Those tiny comforts — a lyric, a laugh, an idol’s smile — were sparks. They were small, but they lit corners of my life when everything else felt grey. Until (sadly) our lives shift, and so does our love for them.
“Ada yang hilang tapi ku tak kehilangan
Ada yang kurang tapi ku kan terbiasa”
Those two lines feel like the quiet journaling of someone who has learned to tell the difference between an absence and a loss. Something can slip away from the edges of your life, an image, a routine, a small thrill, and you notice its absence, but you don’t feel hollow. You realize that not every missing piece leaves a hole; sometimes what’s gone was only a garnish on a bigger, still-intact meal.
I think of a song I used to press play on without thinking, the one that used to brighten a dull evening. When it stopped lighting me up, it didn’t mean my capacity to feel had vanished. The line “Ada yang hilang tapi ku tak kehilangan” is the steady voice that registered the change without pretending it’s catastrophic. It’s the calm observation after the moment of missing: yes, it’s gone, but my life is still here, whole enough to keep going.
Then the second line is patient “Ada yang kurang tapi ku kan terbiasa.” It’s not denial; it’s practice. You teach yourself new rhythms: different playlists, new routes home, other ways to fill quiet afternoons. Habit is the slow, kind work of mending. The thing that made mornings easier doesn’t have to be endlessly present for you to learn how to wake up anyway. You adapt, and in that adaptation, you gain a small, steady courage.
Like life, it doesn’t ask you to mourn dramatically. It offers a softer script: notice what’s missing, name the lack, and then keep breathing while the world rearranges itself around you. Some sparks burn out, some simply travel elsewhere—either way, you carry the warmth they left behind, and you learn, in time, to be warmed by new small lights.
“Percik Kecil meredup sendirinya
Seperti ada campur tangan semesta
Bagai bintang menghilang ditelan pagi
Cerita selesai tanpa kita sadari”
The strange thing about losing sparks is how gentle it is. There’s no definitive moment, no dramatic cut or final message. Instead, it’s a collection of smaller moments: a song you skip without thinking, a group chat you don’t open, a photo that used to make you grin and now only gives you a soft, complicated smile. Each little withdrawal is its own quiet surrender, and together they add up to a new shape of yourself. It can hurt, not because anything was wrong, but because you were younger, you trusted those sparks in ways your older self no longer needs to.
Accepting the change also made me kinder to myself. There’s a strange bravery in allowing things to finish without dramatic closure. Not every ending requires a conversation or a confrontation. Some stories stop because attention shifts, priorities rearrange, seasons move on. The lyric’s claim that the story ends “without us realizing” felt accurate and oddly kind; it suggested we deserve endings that are gentle, not theatrical. I started to treat those small, ended things the way I treat keepsakes: not as failures to be mourned forever, but as artifacts that once served a purpose and now hold a new kind of value.
At first, accepting that quiet ending felt, at first, like admitting a small defeat. But it also felt like learning a new way of holding on to memory: not as a live ember that must be tended to, but as a faded ribbon that still carries the scent of whatever it was tied to. The story closed not with fireworks but with a hush, and in that hush I found room to breathe. I began to see that endings can be as kind as they are inevitable. They don’t always demand we mourn, only that we acknowledge.
But there’s grace in that erosion, too. Letting go doesn’t mean those sparks were lies. Those small lights warmed you. They soothed you during exams, during bad days, during nights when the city felt too loud. Even as their flame faded, the warmth left behind lingered — like embers that won’t rekindle but still remember heat. I found that acknowledging the fade felt like honoring what the spark once did, rather than denying the life I live now. Losing sparks taught me something practical and surprising: that love for small things can change form. It can move sideways into affection, into gratitude, into a gentle smile when a lyric floats up out of nowhere.
So I don’t mourn every spark that dims. I tuck them into a pocket of useful memories and make room for new ones. New songs will come along, new comforts will glow, and different things will become the tiny lights I turn to. And that’s okay. Maybe the real magic isn’t in keeping every spark burning forever, but in learning how to carry the warmth forward — to let it shape us, then let it go, and still be ready for the next small flame that finds its way to us.
