35 Years after my Birth

I wrote this last year and want to share it as it is even if it is 35 years after my birth.

How beautiful were the days when we had no responsibilities. All those moments spent staring at our hands, the days we played with our feet. Our only concern was food.

Sounds used to seem funny, lights were interesting enough to keep us busy all day long. Over time, we learned what they all were. We began to take steps. The first step, the second step. It wasn’t like rolling around in bed or crawling on the floor. The risk was high, but we made it. Slowly, by holding on, securing ourselves. Sometimes, by falling right on our bottoms.

We learned what food was, we learned how to eat. We learned how to choose. We learned that when our parents went into the next room, they hadn’t left our lives, only our line of sight, and that they were always with us.

Meanwhile, we discovered that there were many others in the world like us, and we learned their personalities. We learned to play together, to be close, to be social. Alongside the troubles of others, we learned to share their joys as well. We were constantly learning. Because everything was new. Later, we learned to read and write. To understand symbols, to form meaningful wholes. Every passing minute brought us something new.

For the first time, we began to learn about responsibilities. Making the bed, tidying up toys, doing homework. We may not have received the message that the world wouldn’t always go our way, but we did learn it.

Time kept slipping by, but we always thought it was infinite. Just as sad moments came and went, so did the times when we loved, were loved, and rejoiced. Some were unlucky—they learned all this as children. People by their side disappeared, their pets died, their grandmothers left them. Others realized much later in life that nothing stays the same forever.

As children, it was hard to notice time’s sneaky game. We kept learning, kept reading. We lived through many firsts. We got acquainted with ambition. With goals, with professions. And we did all this within a system where everyone tried to pull one another down. Slowly, we lost trust, we learned what lies were, we learned jealousy. We discovered how cruel people could be, how quickly everything could change. We learned that if you didn’t work, there was no food.

Still, we dreamed beautiful dreams. Dreams in which we were happy, loved, close, and everyone stayed the same. Some of them we achieved. Some remained only dreams, but we began to wear down. We started to feel time more and more. As responsibilities grew, even our eagerness to learn faded away. We encountered more cruelty, and many acts of kindness felt too unreal to remain in memory.

From my birth, 34 years have passed—Anno Domini 2024.

I lived as I always have, chasing after my goals. I supported those who fell, I applauded those who ran. I never once asked, why don’t I have what they have, why am I not where they are? Because I live with the results of my own choices. I always tried to keep the curiosity of childhood alive, I never wanted to grow up. I always valued knowledge. In doing so, I believe I managed to slow down time, at least a little. The moment I began to work in a structured way, that’s when time itself started to run. Perhaps that’s why I could never love order.

I chose distance. Distance from the soil I was born in, to discover new places, new people. It contributed much to me. But it also took things away. I was never truly close, nor entirely distant.

34 years have passed since my birth. Maybe for the first time, I feel the pressure of time this strongly. Call it a midlife crisis, or resistance to adulthood. Looking back at these years, so much has changed. New people entered my life, others left. Some departed from this world, shocking us with their absence. The place I live changed, and so did my perspective on life. It feels as though I’ve become more of a spectator of life.

I feel the effect of time most strongly during my visits to Turkey. Each time I go, the people I imagined to be the same have changed. They are beginning to succumb to time, to surrender. Their appearances, skin, smiles, hair colors, and postures change. Some have shed their ambitions and accepted surrender; some try to resist time, only to realize their bodies won’t comply. And some have long since left everything behind and gone.

No matter how much I resist time, I can’t shake off the sense of meaninglessness. Anno Domini 2024. Exactly 2024 years. And much more before that. Many have come and gone, as much as we read in history books. But what about those we didn’t read about? Were their thoughts, their lives, their experiences meaningless? Those who lost loved ones, those who tried to survive under bombs, those who struggled alone, those who crossed mountains just to eat, the shepherd staring into emptiness as his animals grazed—what were they thinking, for instance? If they saw today, what would they think? And what about the man we call a hero, who fell dead at the first encounter with the enemy, a bullet through his head—what about his children and his wife? What do you think they felt? Why don’t we talk about those who got caught in the machines before they were used properly, those who found jobs because of machines and whose families celebrated their newfound status? And what about the cave dwellers? Was their life really nothing more than hunting and gathering?

Our lives are no different. We will pass on just the same. I somehow managed 34 years—will I manage another 34, or more, who knows? Anno Domini moves one year forward. Never have I felt the passing of a year as much as this. That there will never be another 2024, that we are one year closer to the end, and that time is running short. You may say don’t dwell on it, but once you do, you can’t stop. And I’d rather dwell on it than live like everyone else, trying to be like everyone, taking pleasure in everything offered, conforming to the values and tastes of the majority. Better not to live at all. Believe me, dwelling on it is far healthier. And within this meaninglessness, there is a small comfort. If everything is this meaningless, why do I live? Because meaninglessness and chaos feed my curiosity. Knowing that 99% of what I or anyone else says, does, or dreams is garbage inevitably brings a smile to my face. Put this way, life itself seems nothing but madness. A play in which everyone acts out their roles, forgetting their roles because they’ve begun to believe in the nonsense they themselves created. As for me, I find no solution other than laughing more madly.

I can do nothing but laugh at people giving themselves so much importance, racing to show off, building their identities solely on materials and appearances. And sometimes, I’m left astonished—like a small child—by the way they behave as if time and resources were infinite. The fact that they’ve managed to survive this long is a miracle in itself.

I once thought of time as a coach who slapped us on the back and sent us into the game. Now I see it as a tsunami that sweeps everything away, destroying whatever it holds. Who knows whom it swept away in 2024, whom it is shaking in 2025. Still, happy new year to you.

I realized I haven’t used the word “coach” in a long time. When I say coach, I imagine the animal in a tracksuit. “Come on, champ,” it says, sending the player onto the field.