I don’t know how snowflakes suddenly appeared in my mind on a beautiful spring day. Today I dreamed of watching them descend softly from the sky on a warm spring morning. Then various questions came to my mind. Why do we each have a different fingerprint, just as each snowflake is different? Why this uniqueness, this specialness that we cannot see in life, that no one is aware of? Just as no two snowflakes are exactly the same, no two people are exactly the same. For us humans, this often leads to difficulties in our human relationships. Sometimes we complain that no one can fully understand us, we feel lonely. Sometimes we get very angry with others, even over small things. We want them to understand us fully, we want them to see the world through our eyes, to solve problems in our ways, to be happy with what we are happy with, to get angry with what we get angry with and laugh with what we laugh with.
However, since each snowflake follows a different path as it falls from the sky to the earth, it is exposed to different atmospheric conditions along the way, which makes each of them different from each other, completely unique, unique and original. For snowflakes, each of which has six arms, to form, there must be pollen or dust in the air. Only when an extremely cold water droplet freezes on a pollen or dust particle in the sky does a snowflake begin to form, which in turn forms an ice crystal. As the ice crystal falls to the ground, water vapor freezes on the primary crystal to form new crystals, the six arms of the snowflake. So the dust or pollen that they encounter on their journey, which is not very pleasant, gives them their magnificent beauty. Without the dust or pollen that we don’t like, the beautiful snowflakes that we love so much would not form.
Aren’t we the same? Aren’t we also on our journey through this world, each of us going through a completely different path, being exposed to completely different conditions on the way? Don’t the challenges we face on the way, the experiences we don’t like, shape us and make each of us what we are today? There is a favorite saying in English,“can you walk in my shoes?” He asks if you can take exactly the same steps as me in terms of meaning. No one, not even twin brothers and sisters who grew up in the same house, can exactly follow in one another’s footsteps in this life. And if this is the truth, whom can we condemn? Who can we be angry with? Behind the behavior that we condemn in a person, there is an impact of all the steps that that person has taken from the moment they were born and all the conditions that they have gone through, and unless we have a full command of this information, these memories, we cannot judge the end point, the right or wrong results. Perhaps fingerprints, which have been given to each of us differently and whose mystery has been admired and explored throughout human history, are a sign of this truth that we should not forget.
Just like snowflakes, each person’s unique life journey is shaped by the environment they are exposed to during their journey in the womb, just like snowflakes. This uniqueness of our fingerprints means that no one else in the world has exactly the same ridges and lines that we have on our fingers. The faint lines we see on our fingers are fully formed when we are 6 months old in the womb, 3 months before we are born. Numerous environmental factors are thought to influence the formation of fingerprints, including blood pressure, oxygen levels in the blood, maternal nutrition, hormone levels, the exact position of the fetus in the womb at certain times, its exact composition and density, the amniotic fluid that swirls around the fetal fingers when they touch the surrounding structures and the pressure with which they touch their surroundings, the difference in the length of the umbilical cord. This whole process of development is so chaotic that it is almost impossible for the same pattern to occur twice in the whole of human history. The fingerprints on each finger of the same person’s two hands, and even the fingerprints of identical twins, are different. Nor are fingerprints the only completely unique feature that distinguishes people from one another. Our DNA structures, the irises of our eyes, our voice and facial patterns are also part of an order, each of which contains unique characteristics, each of which has been the subject of a separate scientific research and which fascinates us with its own miracles. The idea that all this perfection could happen completely by chance and for no reason has never occurred to me. On the contrary, I think that behind each of these details there are meanings that we need to think deeply about.
Like snowflakes and fingerprints, no one on this earth can fully understand another because we have come to the present moment through completely different journeys. Only the one who is with us every moment of our journey, closer than our jugular vein, can fully understand us. He alone can be our closest friend and our only refuge. So their expectations of being understood by others always end in disappointment. Of course, let’s try to understand each other as much as we can, but let’s remember that this will always be incomplete and turn only to the friend within. Just as each snowflake, although they look the same from a distance, becomes a whole when it lands on the ground after completing its unique journey and takes a unique shape, and takes the name “snow”, which gives peace to those who look at it and fascinates with its beauty, and all of them become One, we can be stronger, more peaceful and more whole when we can achieve such a unity just like them. If we try to establish this unity first in our own homes, in our families, and then spread it to the whole society, maybe we can become the magnificent looking, powerful yet peaceful snow blanket of tiny snowflakes that stretches as far as the eye can see. When we become snow, when those unique differences in each of us disappear and make us One, then our eyes may open to the truth of wahdat in fraction and fraction in wahdat…
