New Year’s eve is my favorite holiday of the year.
Many people in the United States appear surprised by this admission. In America, you have Thanksgiving and you have Christmas (or Chanukah if you’re Jewish). Nobody I met makes a huge deal about New Year’s. I used to tell people that the reason I made such a big deal about it was because I am Turkish. In Turkey, New Year’s is the biggest holiday of December (well maybe because my family was never religious enough to make a big deal of Chanukah.) New Year’s is when we put trees up and decorate them. It’s when we go out and party all night, returning home only after the next morning’s breakfast. It’s when we exchange gifts. It’s our Christmas.
But this year I realized none of those is the reason I cherish this holiday so fondly. I am a fan because New Year’s symbolizes the end of a year and the beginning of another. Even though I am always sad when I finish a good book, I am always inspired by the beginning of another. Each New Year, I feel full of hope and inspiration for the coming year. It’s a feeling very similar to those fleeting moments I wrote about, but the inspiration lasts even longer and I get to put off taking action on it for a few days. It’s like starting a new notebook. I know it’s silly and I know it’s fleeting. But it still fills me with joy.
I, of course, have many plans for this year. I will lose weight. I will write more. I will take more photographs so I can learn more. I will read more. I will work harder and take less of my work home with me. I will enjoy sunny San Diego. I will make new friends. I will start volunteering again. I will learn at least one new thing every week. I will travel at least every other weekend to see the beauties California has to offer. I will relax more. I will let go a tiny bit. I will eat lunch under the sun at least twice a week. I will reply to email faster. I will participate in life more. I will call my friends more regularly. I will get a dog. I might decide to get pregnant. I will stop being so scared. I will stop feeling so inadequate. I will eat better. I will exercise more. I will stop being afraid to drive alone. I will learn to ride a bike. I will sign up for classes I like to take. I will get to know San Diego and give it a fair chance. I will forgive.
The list can go on forever, of course. But I recently realized that it all comes down to one thing: I need to learn to be happy. I need to give up that something’s wrong all the time. I need to stop feeling so small and appreciate the amazing things and people in my life. I don’t mean it in the ‘be thankful you’ve got arms and legs’ way, though that wouldn’t be so bad either. I mean it in the ‘life really is beautiful and I really am lucky’ way. I need to find what makes me want to be sad so much and rip it out of my system. If I can accomplish that this year, 2004 will be the best year of my life.
I’m not exactly sure why, but I woke up thinking of some of my favorite moments. Since I remember little about my childhood, most of the moments are in the last decade but I have a few precious ones from before. Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Learning to Read: My sister taught me how to read when I was about 3, I was jealous that she could read the newspaper and I couldn’t. So she and I lay on my parents’ bed and practiced until I got it right.
2. My Parent’s Wedding: My parents got divorced when I was in the third grade. I still remember the day they sat us down and told us they were getting remarried, to each other, about two years later. I had to ditch school to go to the wedding.
3. Getting in to AAG: I spent the summer of sixth grade studying for an entry exam to one of the best schools in Turkey. Three quarters way through the summer I found out that they would only accept one potential student. It was too late to give up so I kept studying even though I knew I had no chance as I was a terrible exam-taker. On the day of the exam, I woke up with a fever of 100-something and I was too tired to freak out. I came in second place and the girl who came in first ended up attending another school.
4. My first kiss: My best friend then. My first boyfriend. Someone I truly love even now. A moment I won’t forget.
5. Getting in to CMU: I applied early. I got in through the waiting list in May. Six long months of anticipation, hope, despair. The day I got in my mom greeted me with the telegram and a bouquet of flowers as I left the minibus that took me to school and back.
6. College: Some of my best memories were in college. There are too many to count. All the friends I made. My first job, Boyfriends. Best friends. All-nighters. The list would never end.
7. Corporate World and NYC: I needed a job to be able to stay in the United States. My first real job was the first sign that I might be able to stay here. NYC was the best place to celebrate the beginning of my adult life. NYC was the best place to spend my twenties.
8. Japan: The six months I spent in Tokyo for work taught me everything and more. One of the biggest risks I took as far as being away from every single person I knew and going to a culture and country I knew nothing about and a language I couldn’t speak. Now I can.
9.Birth of my nephews: Being at the hospital when my sister delivered the tiny twins. When she said “Am I a mother now?” When they opened their eyes. Seeing them grow have been some of the best moments of my life.
10. Going part-time: Working at a prestigious bank only three days a week was supposed to kill my career. I didn’t care. I wanted to volunteer. I wanted to take classes. I wanted to live more. I got to do all of it. Volunteered two days a week, took six classes a semester. All for fun. And my career? Only went north. Started as a programmer, moved to managing a small team and then a global team and ended up as a Vice President. So much for “they” who are supposed to know it all.
11.Getting accepted to Teach For America: The night of my TFA interview, my eight-year boyfriend proposed to me. The next morning, my manager told me that I had made Vice President. These should have been the good omen I needed to know I would get accepted but I wanted to do this so badly that I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it on paper. Regardless of how it all ended, TFA was one of the best choices I made in my life and I still feel privileged to have been a part of it.
12. My wedding and honeymoon: Knowing I get to spend the rest of my life with my favorite person on earth. Seeing one of the rare jewels of earth with him. Does it get any better?
13. Leaving NYC: It was time. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. I miss many many things about New York. Walking the streets at all times of day and night. The subway. My favorite bookstore. My good friends. My bagel shop. The opera. SoHo, The cabbies. NYPL. The only place that’s felt like home to me so far. But I am ready for a new start. Something different.
14. Traveling across the USA: A big dream of mine for the last ten years. It was better than I could have expected. Swamps of Louisiana, caverns and white sands and mountains of New Mexico, state parks in just about every state west of Missouri, Great Sand Dunes, lots of lava. My first time camping ever. First time driving for more than a half hour. First time in just about 30 states. First time owning a car. First accident. Tons of memories. Tons of pictures. Tons of stories.
15. Starting Fresh: A brand new city. A brand new job. A brand new apartment. A brand new life. Room for new favorite moments.
What are some of your favorite moments?
I’ve been noticing a pattern among people I know. It occurs most commonly between couples who’ve been together for a long time. But it also happens to longtime friends. Sisters. Brothers. Anyone who claims to be close.
People lie.
Okay, two qualifiers. One, I do understand that people lie all the time and that whomever says otherwise is lying. Two, when I say lie, I mean more that they don’t tell the truth. Somewhere along the line in a relationship, we learn what the other person wants to hear and spend a large amount of energy providing those answers instead of the truth.
We make up many excuses not to say what we really mean. We don’t want to hurt her feelings. We don’t want to annoy him. We don’t want to frustrate her. The list goes on and on. In our minds, we are doing a service to the other person. We are preventing an argument. We are preventing a possible altercation. We are sacrificing a future or even an imminent problem by evading the truth. We are sacrificing ourselves on behalf of the other person and they don’t even get to find out. Aren’t we such angels?
The fact is: we are not. The whole time while we’re sacrificing ourselves on behalf of the other person, on behalf of the relationship, we’re secretly building up resentment. We’re angry at the other person for not letting us be ourselves. For not letting us tell them how we really feel. We may not even notice it at the time because it’s only a tiny trickle of it. It’s as small as a seed. But it grows. Each time we say something we don’t want to, each time we agree when we don’t mean it, each time we don’t say what we mean, the seed grows.
Eventually, it gets so big that we don’t even give much thought to the truth. We automatically say the answer. We convince ourselves that the other person wouldn’t respond to the actual truth. Wouldn’t even want to hear it. So we never share it. We don’t even give the other person the benefit of the doubt. We just resent them. For who they are. For who they were years ago. For the choices we made.
I don’t know why it took me so long to notice this pattern but it’s all around me. I see it everywhere. All the time. Each time I’ve faced the other person and asked them why they won’t just say it? Why not face their loved one and tell him to truth? In the name of getting rid of years of resentment. Years of not giving the other person a chance to know the full truth. Every time I asked, I consistently got an enthusiastic no. I couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t listen. He doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t care. It would start a fight.
How do we grow to give so little benefit of the doubt to the people we love the most?
Somewhere in the last eight months, I appear to have changed, or maybe strengthened is the more correct word, some of my beliefs. Between the quitting. the moving, the traveling, and the starting over, it seems I decided to put a lot of value on a frequently-overlooked trait: integrity.
In the last few months, I have worked hard to be honest and do the right thing. I’m not saying I’ve succeeded in every instance. I still have over 60 unanswered emails sitting in my inbox from the last few weeks alone. I don’t always call friends back when I say I will. I am frequently too lazy to finish a task that I deem important. But I try harder than I ever did. I am adamant about doing my job right and being honest with those around it even if it’s not always so convenient. I find myself fervently urging others around me to do the same.
Several people have warned me that this is naive behavior and that I must be not mature enough yet to believe that integrity and success can go hand in hand. The thought that you can’t succeed without cheating someone or something is so depressing that I refuse to believe it. How is it possible that working hard to do the right thing and being honest with those around you is considered an immature thought?
Is it really true that you can’t reach the top without doing something unethical or illegal along the way? Have we all come to accept that as a way of life? If so, what does that say about humanity and our future?
I want to believe that there are enough people out there who feel as strongly as I do about the power of integrity that they would choose to do business with an honest organization/company over one that cheats its way to the top. But maybe I am just fooling myself. Maybe the world is as bitter and cynical as the people who say I am naive. My belief is that you get what you give. If you give wholeheartedly and honestly, you receive with the same pure force. And I am not so young that I don’t realize there are times when people take advantage of you and you kindness, but I still feel strongly that those who are good win bigger and better in the long run.
At least, they can look themselves in the mirror and be proud of who they are.
And if that’s childish, well… I hope I never grow up.
When we decided to move to Southern California, I had never been to this part of the country. Six months before our move, we made a list of all the cities we thought we’d like to live in and then eliminated them one by one. We couldn’t live in Chicago because it was too cold and too expensive. Jake wanted to live somewhere warm; I wanted to live by the water. We both wanted something that was a decent-sized city but neither one of us wanted the expensive rents and tiny apartments of New York City anymore.
We eliminated all the way down to Santa Fe or San Diego. For weeks we pondered which but didn’t really do much research. I had never visited either and Jake had only been to Santa Fe. We’d both been to San Francisco but nowhere in Southern California. Jake kept asking me which I preferred and I couldn’t make a decision between two places I knew nothing about, but after two weeks I suddenly said, “We’ve moving to San Diego.” When he asked me why, all I could say was that I had picked San Diego and that was that.
We made up the reasons afterwards. Santa Fe got too cold in the winter. San Diego was closer to a major city with an international airport which made it easier to fly home. San Diego was in California, had the benefits of the West Coast but wasn’t New-York expensive. We would have moved to San Francisco but we were really tired of living in small apartments. I wanted a house, badly. And San Diego had perfect weather. So it was settled. By the time we actually arrived here, there was no doubt we were meant to live here.
We’ve now been in San Diego for four months. We don’t have a house but we do have an apartment more than twice the size of the one we had in New York and the rent is almost half. We have a porch which we use quite often. The weather is somewhat chilly up in La Jolla but the sun shines every day and I have yet to wear a coat. San Diego delivered on all it promised.
Yet I had no idea there would be so many things I didn’t like. So many people I can’t relate to. I didn’t realize what a struggle it would be to learn to drive at thirty and to lack the independence driving provides here. I didn’t think much of how my life in New York was surrounded by people I cared about and places that were so familiar to me until it all disappeared. I know that we’ve just gotten here and I know that it will take time to settle in and to make friends. I know that I will eventually be able to drive myself around and I will grow to love this beautiful city. But I don’t know if I will ever truly belong here. When I see the streets of New York on TV, they are familiar like home. Yet, the ones here feel different. Distant. Like a vacation that’s bound to end eventually.
In the meantime, I plan to enjoy one of the main jewels of my new city: nature. I cherish the breathtaking beaches with sand pipers chasing after crabs, running away from waves. I am amazed by the inexplicable beauty of the Joshua Trees. I love that we can drive two hours out of the city and be in the middle of a desert and sit on the side of a cliff, staring into expansive flat land filled with jack rabbits.
That is quite magical.
The first call came Friday night around 2a.m, I think. All I remember is the phone ringing and my not being able to tell if it was real or my dream. When I answered it, I was so tired that it took me several minutes to recognize my mom. “Don’t be scared,” she said, which is the way we always start a conversation if bad news is about to follow. She continued to explain that two major synagogues in Istanbul were bombed, but that I shouldn’t worry because they were all accounted for and alive. Jake’s brother, who moved to Istanbul a week ago, was also safe and sound.
I got up and read about the events in all the papers I could find. I read the Times and CNN and several Turkish papers and then I went back to sleep. The next morning I talked to my mom again. She said both synagogues had Bar mitzvahs scheduled and my parents were invited and had decided not to attend. Otherwise, they would have been in the synagogue at the time of the bombings. I asked if they knew anyone who was affected. A friend of mine’s fiancee’s brother, she said, was a guard at the synagogue and only 19. He is no longer alive. Another friend’s mother was taking her granddaughter to school, Both dead.
Last night, my cell phone rang around 3a.m. I had told my friend Tara, who lives in Ireland and was working on a college application which was due today, that she could call me if she needed a last look before she sent her paper in. So when the call came and I saw a long number on my caller-id, I assumed it was she. But it was my mom again and she started with, “Don’t be scared,” again. She said “Bad things are happening here and I don’t want you to be worried. We’re all fine and at home, I am still looking for Jake’s brother, call his parents.” I told her that I didn’t want to call them unless we knew he was okay so could she please call me back. I went back to bed with my cell phone. She called back in fifteen minutes and said she had found him and he was okay. I called my father in law, read some of the web sites and went back to bed. I was to wake up in two hours and report to a twelve-hour workday. I had an 8A.M. meeting that I still hadn’t fully prepared for. Sleep must have eventually come because I remember looking at my clock around 4:50 and then again at 6:15. Right after I arrived at work, my mom called again and said that they were all at my sister’s and very shaken but alive.
I remember the Tuesday morning of September 11th clearly and how thankful I felt that my dad was able to reach us before the phone lines went dead. In the twelve years I have lived in the United States, I have never had to wake up to the phone calls I have received in the last week. I am not sure how many more of them I can take. I am even more scared of the possibility that after another such horrible incident, they might not come. Moving back home has crossed my mind more often this week than ever before. I know that I can’t protect them if I am there but at least I can live each day with them and be there. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense but I genuinely don’t know how to deal with this situation.
It also made me think a lot more about the insignificant worries that get in the way of my living my life with joy and how perspective only comes with tragedy. I am not naive enough to think such events never occurred before but I do know that they have suddenly become a lot more prominent in my life than ever before and I haven’t fully figured out how to cope. Not that I want to learn to cope with this.
“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them. You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.’ -Illusions by Richard Bach
I remember reading the above line, years ago, when I was sixteen and pondering about it. I totally got how you could rewrite your future but I didn’t get what he meant about the past. Over the years, I came up with many interpretations for the author’s meaning. Since I haven’t met and asked him, I am still not sure what he meant by that line, but I know what it means to me.
All we have tying us to our past are our memories of it. And memory is selective. My interpretation of rewriting the past is remembering events differently. Since most of it is our mental game, we could choose to play it differently and, boom, the past is not longer what it was.
Tonight I thought of another way we tend to rewrite the past. This case is slightly different in that, the past was actually different. I was looking at some old pictures. Months after the time the picture was taken, certain events followed. These events showed that at the time the picture was taken, there was some missing information, so now when I look back at the pictures, knowing what I know now, it changes everything. In this case, I am not rewriting the past, but I am realizing how it wasn’t what I thought it was.
It’s all about perception. At times, it’s hard to differentiate between reality and perception and we conjoin them more often than we should.
Perception is why watching the same movie several times gives us different kinds of food for thought. Why the same book changes meaning with each read. Why it’s important to go back and re-explore the past, the movies, the books after each life change. Each new path. Every few years.
Not only can the past be rewritten. It is rewritten often and inevitably.
There are times I wish that wishing was enough.
This is the eleventh year that I’ve made this wish and still I know it won’t come true. A wish that involves another person. A wish that is beyond my control.
When I was little, one of my teachers told me that my wish would come true if I wanted it badly enough. I interpreted that to mean hard work and strong will. I always worked hard to achieve my goals. Things didn’t always turn out exactly as I wanted them but when I look back on my life, I can’t think of one unfulfilled wish that I still think about.
Except this one.
There have been times in my life where I was too scared or worried to take a path. I’ve regretted some and not others but I’ve always recognized that whether it be due to weakness or insecurity, the choices were mine and so is the responsibility. In cases where my actions, or lack thereof, have affected others, I’ve tried hard to apologize. Many have responded to my apologies with kindness and understanding.
Some have not.
In cases where another person doesn’t feel the way I do about resolving an issue that might have come up between us, I feel completely powerless. There are many emotions I don’t prefer to experience but feeling powerless in relation to something I care deeply about must be in the top five.
I’ve talked to many people about this situation in the last ten years and the consensus seems to be that I should let go of it. “You’ve done all that you could. Just relax and forget about it.”
Easy for you to say.
I can’t forget about it. I choose not to forget about it. I don’t want to forget the fact that there’s a part of me that is capable of hurting someone so deeply that they won’t forgive me, even a decade later. One might say, that should make me powerful; the fact that I can have such a strong influence on another human being. But it doesn’t. I just makes me scared. It makes me sad. I care about this person. I want this person to be in my life again. I want to not have caused this much pain to another person. I want us to share moments of life again. To cherish the good memories.
Yet none of that can happen without forgiveness.
This is a shot taken outside the building where I work at 3:30pm today.
The fires have been burning for three days now. When they started, up north, on Saturday night, we had no idea. We were entertaining twelve people down by the pool, having bbq and enjoying the hot tub. Sunday morning, Jake woke up to find some ashes on my bikini, on the balcony, and we could smell quite a bit of smoke. We figured it must be a small fire down the street. Jake went to get some bagels and the New York Times and told me to turn on the TV. By this point, hell had broken loose.
I don’t know many people in San Diego, yet. I called and emailed the one person I knew in Scripps Ranch. She had taken her cats, a few belongings and evacuated her house just in case. I told her she could come here anytime and asked her to keep in touch. Everyone else I knew seemed safe and sound in their home. We had out of town guests who ended up spending most of the day holed up with us. The restaurants shut down, the air smelled too bad to take a walk. People called with rumors that they were evacuating our neighborhood. I kept wondering if I should pack up. I couldn’t even figure out what I would take with me if the situation arose. The experience of being glued and horrified by TV brought back unpleasent memories of September 2001. The more I watched, the more depressed and scared I became.
The fires are still raging on. The quality of air declines every day. Cars are covered with ash and it’s pointless to try to clean them. Today, I watched the sun set behind a wall of dark smoke. The sky was black and the sun firey red. The word eerie comes to mind.
I know that I am incredibly lucky to still have my house and my job and my loved ones. I know that the fires are moving the other way and the chances of anything hitting my home are reduced. Yet, I still feel uneasy.
The sky isn’t supposed to be red or black in the middle of the day.
My question of the day is: Do you help a friend who’s walking down the wrong path?
A few years ago, I would have said, “Absolutely.” Assuming this was a friend whom I feel close to and can be honest with, I would do anything necessary to ‘save’ my friend.
I’m not so sure anymore.
First of all, who makes me the judge of whether a path is right or wrong? How do I know what path is better for my friend? I feel like it’s conceded of me to assume I know what’s best for someone else. I can’t even be entirely sure what’s best for my own self.
‘Fixing’ my friend, besides implying that she’s broken also implies that I am qualified to fix her. Am I willing to take the responsibility that my way may not work out for her? Am I sure my solution will actually work?
While I am now willing to admit that telling my friend he is fucking up his life is a very cocky assumption, I still don’t know the best course of action. What if my friend has a habit that might cause her to permanently harm herself physically? What if my friend is putting her life at risk? What if he’s putting other people’s lives at risk? Where is the line? When should I move from ‘supporting-mode’ to ‘meddling-mode’? Is it ever really okay to meddle?
I understand the how presumptuous it sounds to say that I can ‘fix’ someone’s life. I understand that people have different past. Different personalities. Different priorities. Different paths. I understand that something that looks one way from the outside may be completely different from the inside. I get all that.
At the same time, I wonder if there’s a point where, as a friend, it is my place to take action. To give more than support. To stop waiting.
Is there such a point? Or is it always best to wholeheartedly and non-judgmentally support your friends regardless of the paths they take or the decisions they make?
And do these rules change if it’s a family member as opposed to a friend? What about a sibling?
I simply don’t know the answers anymore.
My favorite, though, was that we now live in an age of what a Microsoft researcher, Linda Stone, called continuous partial attention. I love that phrase. It means that while you are answering your e-mail and talking to your kid, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation. You are now involved in a continuous flow of interactions in which you can only partially concentrate on each. -Thomas Friedman
These words struck a chord with me on Saturday. As a person who’s always multi-processing, I’ve often wondered if I don’t listen wholeheartedly enough. I took a class on Theories of Personality class last year and I remember learning about Carl Rogers and how he listened to each patient with full attention. He emphasized empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard for his clients. The has a reputation for fully concentrating on the patient.
That level of attention is so rare. Most people listen half the time and even when they are listening, they don’t entirely hear what the other person is saying. They are busy thinking “what does this mean to me” or they are making a list of their daily to-dos. We do hold several conversations simultaneously. We do write email as we speak. We do interrupt conversations as the cell phone rings or as the beeper goes off. I am personally guilty of simultaneously executing several processes in my brain. I am almost always doing something else while I talk on the phone. I write email as I watch TV. Even if I don’t answer my cell, I certainly glance at the screen to see who it is.
Some of that doesn’t bother me too much. Some conversations don’t need my full attention. Nor do some emails. But then there are those who do. The question is, am I able to tell the difference each time?
When I’m in the same room with a person, I can tell when the conversation shifts from being superficial to substantial. I can tell if the person is upset or is seeking someone with whom to converse. It’s much harder over the phone, especially the cell phone, which can catch me at any moment, in any location. Is it better that I am not accessible at all or that I am there but not able to fully focus on the conversation at hand? Before technology, if my friend was feeling upset and wanted to talk, she couldn’t even find me. Now she can but she runs the chance of having partial attention. What’s worse?
I strongly believe in the power of full attention. Next time someone comes to you for advice or an ear, try dropping everything you do and listening them. Fully. See if you can tell the difference.
I save all my email.
I’m not exactly sure why but I have emails going back to my Freshman year in college, my first email account ever. The first email I can find is dated September 16, 1992. Every now and then, I decide to go back and read some of the thousands of messages I’ve exchanged during four years of college. Today was one of those days.
Each time I read them, I’m amazed at how many friends I’ve completely lost touch with over the years. Some, I fell out of touch with before graduation, others soon after. A few of the emails are from people I can’t even remember. Some of the people I remember, I have no idea why the emails stop so abruptly. Did something happen? Did one of us piss the other off somehow? I imagine I’d remember if someone had hurt my feelings and caused me to discontinue our conversation so I am assuming that one of us got lazy and didn’t keep up with the correspondence and the other didn’t follow up. The emails and then the friendship just tapered off.
The funny thing is, many of those emails bring me fond memories today and I am always tempted to track down and contact those individuals. This, of course, opens a can of worms: Would they remember me? Would they respond back or think I am a weirdo for contacting them after ten years? Would they get freaked out by the fact that I tracked them down?
If I think about it for long enough, I figure I have nothing to lose (besides the precious time it will take to track them down). If people are weirded out by my contacting them, they simply won’t write back and that’s that. If, on the other hand, one of them does remember me and wants to get back in touch, I get the chance to reunite with an old friend. Doesn’t sound like too much of a risk to take.
I go through this thought-process each time I read my archive of mails. I am always amazed at how many people were an important part of my life at one time and today I can’t even tell you where they live. How many people’s emails still make me smile today. How many memories are fresh on my mind. How much fun college really was. And, of course, how much I’ve changed since I came to the United States. These people are a tie to my past; they had a part in my becoming who I am. No wonder a part of me craves to find them again.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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