MEHMET AKSEL
We are going through difficult times.
In fact, I should have started by saying “We are going through difficult times again” because I have seen what this country has been through in the last 50 years, more than you can shake a stick at.
I have seen wars, coups, earthquakes, a pandemic, anarchy, terror, and crises; I have seen the administrations of Ecevit, Demirel, Özal, Çiller and Erdoğan.
Life goes on and unfortunately my country is constantly in a whirlpool, a storm…
I think we are the victims of our geography, our beliefs, and our character.
If only we could have a consciousness that internalizes the institutional structure that Atatürk deemed worthy of us, and that he wanted us to establish, by building on and expanding the structure that he founded, even after hisdeath, with leaders and governments acting in line with this ethos, and long-term education policies…
I always talk about this when I’m amongst friends; many of the leaders in our country had the opportunity to go down in history, but were unable to do so due to their personal ambitions, inadequacies, ideological obsessions and/or neediness stemming from their mistakes; unfortunately we still cannot pull through.
Mehmet Y. Yılmaz said “We actually live in a country where we would have a lot of fun if we weren’t its citizens” in his article published on T24 the other day.
I partially agree with the first part of the sentence and completely agree with the second part.
Yes, I know that it is very difficult for our low-income people, yes, I know that the atmosphere can be tiring and sometimes suffocating, but I also love this place because it is a country where we have to adapt to a different scenario each day and where we constantly release adrenaline.
Last week, we met with MSA students at one of their business education courses.
In the hall, there were bright young people as well asmiddle-aged ones.
At the beginning of the lesson, I tried to understand what each of them wanted to achieve in a sentence or two.
Among them were those who wanted to open their own businesses, and those who wanted to tidy up their existing businesses. There were those who studied cookery or pastry-bakery, chef & owner, and those who worked as consultants.
Since 2004, I have been doing a conversation class every year, and for the first time in years, I observed apessimism and reticence in most of the students.
As someone who is in favor of everyone minding their own business and focusing on their own goals, I challenged their views with understanding and sweetness.
I suggested that they abandon this attitude immediately and get rid of this negative mindset straightaway.
Years ago, I had given a Ted X talk.
If you allow me, I will quote a few of the things I mentioned in the talk:
“We are all trying to do good things in our lives, from our daily pursuits to our bigger life plans.
But the environment, on the contrary, is almost designed to prevent us from doing these things.
Unfortunately, our friends, families, people we consult and even those we do not consult, even our ancestors, try to fit our view of life inside small frames.
I have spent my life hearing people talk about what I can and cannot do.– Starting with my mother who told me that I would fall if I climbed the wall behind our house throughout my childhood, – And people around me who told me that I couldn’t be a grown-up if I misbehaved,– These vital advice continued with people who said I would be a ‘dead loss’ if I didn’t go to university as someone whose father was an engineer and whose grandfather was a distinguished professor.
Did these put me under pressure? No, not at all. But I kept on hearing these and feeling them. – What was impossible for me to achieve while doing sports,– What was impossible for me to find while collecting,
– Or that a girl I was hanging out with was impossible for me.
This went on, in all its cruelty and at all times.
Do you think it has ceased?– My friends continue to say that if I keep on driving this fast, I won’t ‘live long’,– My bank keeps saying that if I use this loan, I ‘will not be able to repay it’, and that it would be wiser to use half of it,– My wife keeps saying that if I get too caught up in the details in my human relationships, I ‘will be left with no friends’ (which I think is true).
And there is this ‘thing’: ‘Why bother bro.’– You search and find the best, ‘Why bother bro.’– You try hard, and you get lost in the details of the work you do, ‘What’s the point, bro’.– When investing, you spend what you have in your hand, and then you even go into debt, ‘What was the need, bro.’
I think people want to implicate you in the things that they cannot do or dare to do.
We also have the ‘proverbs’, whoever said them…
And these are mostly ‘life draining’ sayings.
A bunch of good for nothing guys who couldn’t achieve anything themselves, must have said all these unnecessary maxims so that we wouldn’t go ahead and do a good job that would overshadow them.
They told us:
– That we shouldn’t teach an old dog new tricks,
– We should cut our coat according to our means,
– A bad temper would only hurt its beholder.
And what’s worse, these maxims have been adopted by the soulless, unhappy and discouraged for years, and of course, they provided cover for their incompetence.
I also talked about my business life, the crises I went through, my bankruptcies and my efforts to rise upagain.
Throughout my life, I have always approached money as ‘fuel in the tank’.
Instead of collecting it in my basket like flowers, I have used money like fuel to travel.
Sometimes I had a lot of fuel, and sometimes not so much.
Sometimes my tank was full of debt; sometimes the red light was on, and sometimes I was strandedroadside.
But I always found another can and kept on going.
Maybe I earned less, but the excitement of always being an outlier made me happier.
Maybe I earned less, but those confused looks onpeople’s faces always motivated me more.
And in my life where I have gathered all these ‘Don’t’, ‘No way’, ‘Can’t do’, ‘Is that even possible’, ‘How is it worth that much’ dictums, along with my mistakes and successes, I have become a very very very happy person who gladly runs to work, runs back home, and gets busy when things that I would like to spare time for comes my way.
I can even say that these ‘You can’t’s and ‘You couldn’t’s have always served as a driving force for me.
I always laughed up my sleeve and said, ‘Wait and see’.
I listened to everyone before I did something, but as I did something, I never listened to anyone.
I only ever did what I wanted to do.”
I had concluded my speech with these words that day:
“Here’s the moral of my story…
Only you know what you can and cannot do, no one knows it better than you.
Believe me, if they knew, they would have done it themselves.
Please don’t listen to anyone, ever, and whatever you want to do in your life, dare to do it.”
There is a new year ahead of us.
It will neither be better nor worse than those before.
Just one more year to live and remember (I hope there will be many more for all of us).
My advice: Let’s take care of our health, mind our own business, make time for our family and loved ones, and live fully another year, worth remembering for its rightsand wrongs, beauties and hardships.
I wish us all health and happiness.
I wanted to share a few quotes that I love, with the hope that you will remember them in the New Year:– The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.– Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.– If you are asked to sweep the streets; Sweep as Michelangelo painted, Beethoven composed, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Let it be swept so well that everyone in the sky and on earth will stop and say, “Here lives the best garbage man in the world.”– Quality is the uncompromising essence of meaningful detail.– Sometimes people don’t want to be strong, they just want to be happy.– Pleasure is nature’s test, her sign of approval.
And these are just so you don’t do as such:
People are afraid to love because they are afraid of losing
Afraid of working, out of fear of responsibility
Afraid of speaking and doing, out of fear of criticism
Afraid of getting old, because of not knowing the value of youth
Afraid of being forgotten, because of not giving the world anything good
And are actually afraid of dying, because they don’t know how to live.