The sun is setting, the sky is packing up to pass on the day’s relics to the next day… The unique view of the Bosphorus, that magical portrait that delights the eyes and the heart, takes on a variety of colors, accompanied by a song in my mind. For me, every landscape is fully realized and even more beautiful with a melody accompanying it. Because the unifying power of music allows me to gather even material objects in my mind at one point. As I try to gather the thoughts flying around in my mind with the inspiration of the music inside me, I start singing that song I love out loud without realizing it. At that moment, my friend, whom I have been waiting for a while, comes to me, my voice mingling with the waves of the Bosphorus, accompanied by the velvet-toned voice of my old friend. We sing the lyrics of our favorite song against two familiar gurus with a feeling of sadness and joy. The weather is good, the song and the scenery are so beautiful that you don’t even notice your surroundings… What more can you ask for?
Then, a group of young people with their laughter and their own fun music join us in the corner we occupy. With the onslaught of this noise-like music, I lose my calmness and wake up from the happy dream I was in with the noise of a handful of young people. I watch them for a while with strange and disgruntled eyes. “How foreign their laughter and conversations are to me, how distant the music they listen to and the dances they dance with strange movements…”
While I am thinking these thoughts, a wry smile settles on my face, the meaning of which even I cannot decipher. I turn to my friend and say, “Shall we sing a song to the young people that they don’t know?” and wait for him to look at me with the same cynical eyes and approve me. He must not have liked this, because he stares at me with eyes wide with astonishment and violence and returns my smile, saying, “How do you know they don’t know?” I am shocked by this unexpected behavior and I fall silent, not knowing what to say. “He’s right! How do I know? And how dare I belittle them and claim they don’t know…” Now I laugh bitterly at myself. The pain starts in my brain and moves to my chest, and the true friend’s address, “You don’t know the inside of things you like or don’t like,” and my friend’s reproachful question embrace right in the middle of my chest. And everything starts after this embrace…
After saying goodbye to my friend, this time I decide to watch the landscape that my experience has created in me and listen closely to what my heart and soul are telling me. My soul, stuck and aching between what I know and what I think I know, whispers to me: Indeed, man is ignorant of what he does not know and a slave to what he thinks he knows. And they often do not realize or avoid realizing that they are in the grip of this bondage. So much so that these suspicions, disguised over time as prejudices, turn into road-breaking bandits that prevent us from seeing the better and the more beautiful on the path of life. As a result, rather than knowing oneself (which is one’s main duty), one’s life capital is consumed in the pursuit of knowing others, analyzing and examining their conditions. He condemns his soul, which should occupy a place on high, to suffer like this, longing for the place where it belongs.
However, those who are freed from this bondage look at the universe and each and every particle with tolerance and the eye of wonder. He receives wisdom wherever and from whomever. Although they have enough knowledge to start schools and movements, they tear the molds by saying, “If I put what I don’t know under my feet, my head would be worthy of the sky,” and “If there is one thing I know, it is that I know nothing,” without being enslaved by it, and in this way they reveal that they are true seers and knowers. And because of this, instead of shrinking, it grows and grows, indeed, it raises its head to the sky, and its name is still spoken over the years, even centuries later. His words are a guide for those who, like me, are trying to make the right path…
Peace be upon their immaculate souls…
