It’s not like me to stay up until late in the office, but last Friday night, I did.
It was not work, nor it was about deadline. It was purely my laziness to get up and walk down and get into the car and head off to this restaurant on which I have had made a dinner schedule with a friend from Melbourne. But it was still 30 minutes to our meeting time, and I hate to be the one waiting.
So I stayed – talking to my colleagues who were feeling the same thing.
And we struck a very interesting two-minute conversation.
At least for me.
For the sake of practicality, let’s say I was talking with colleague A, and I asked him about how colleague B was doing.
“It’s not like me to pry into other people’s businesses,” colleague A said. “I rarely ask questions. But if colleague B wants to talk, he’ll talk.”
“Perhaps it’s a girl thing to ask people how they are doing, because sometimes people actually want to tell what’s been happening, if only they are being asked,” I said.
“I don’t like to be kepo*,” he said.
But most people do.
I admit that most of the time, I’d love to know everything. Like, both my sisters and my mother say that I’m so kepo, and perhaps, I really am. News travel quickly, be it of boy breaking up with girl, or boy getting together with girl, or someone getting a new job, or stuff.
While it’s not necessarily my business, nor that I can change anything if I do know about it, nor that I can offer any solution, but still, it’s good to know about stuffs happening around you.
So I chuckled, and asked, “Do you know why people like to be kepo?”
“Why?”
“It’s not necessarily to gossip or to know everything that’s been going on. Sometimes, it’s simply because they don’t want to be left out.”
“Huh?”
“People like to pry into other people’s businesses even when they have nothing to do with it because they want to feel as if they are part of the group. And sharing the same knowledge makes you feel… connected.”
He was silent for a while, perhaps digesting what I have just said word for word.
Then, he said, “I think you’re right.”
*kepo is an Indonesian slang which means prying into other people’s business even when we don’t need to know.
