One more visit to Turkey is over. As I always do, reflection
time. The main theme in my reflections over this visit happens to be around how
we Turks (or is this cross-cultural?) lock each other into a box and interpret
each other through the confines of that box, which may sometimes be decades old.
That confinement we engage in at individual level certainly cannot be
segregated from the macro level confinement the culture imposes on us. As the
years go by, I realize more and more that I tried to escape this confinement
process, this, in a way, imprisonment by leaving Turkey in 1998 and getting
established in the US.
For years after I moved to the US, I thought, it was my family that practiced this confinement loaded with some elements of judgment, slight grandiosity, oppression in the name of protection, explosive expressivity, suffering over shame and guilt: My family has always been full of pride around being Cretan and having brought more western values to Anatolia, where most of native Turks had some decades ahead of them to catch up with the West, when the Cretans arrived in Turkey. They had kept their pride in hiding during the oppressive discrimination period in the early 1900s. Once they integrated into the dominant culture in the next couple of generations, more and more of that pride was released mostly in a benevolent manner, yet, still feeding into a subtle looking down on the native Turks and Turkish culture.
All the ornaments of this ethnic identification and
confinement helped them stay who they were when they were confined into their
own ethnic group: The truth be told, when the “Catastrophie” as Greeks call it,
occurred it moved millions of people across the Aegean, Greek speaking
Anatolians to Greece and Muslim Greeks, known as Turkos to Anatolia. Neither
Turkos of Greece nor Greeks of Anatolia were welcome initially in their new
country: Turkos were discriminated against by the derogatory nickname “The seed
of Greeks” as well the Anatolian Greeks being called “Turkos”. Just as any
ethnicity in a new land does under cultural pressures of othering, my people
also kept it to themselves. They intermarried, they continued speaking Greek
rather Cretan instead of rushing to learn Turkish that protected the Cretan
identity at least for three generations.
I also was forced to identify with the high expectations of this subculture for at least for several decades. Some of these expectations were good, hard work, honor, honesty, family values, excelling in anything you did… However, some of these virtues were also entangled with judgmental-ism, slight (perhaps not so slight, who knows) grandiosity or pride, shame and guilt… It wasn’t until my 30s that I finally started seeing that something in this subculture was not right. Individual rights and need for happiness were being sacrificed in the name of the well-being of the group all around me, which started alienating me from my roots. Perhaps I carried a subconscious awareness of that even during my childhood, which might have led to my refusal to learn Greek, the mother tongue of my grandparents. My parents had already integrated into Turkish-ness and dominant Turkish culture that became my natural path for couple of decades, also. During my late 20s early 30s, I started recognizing through this process of becoming fully Turkish that there was no difference between the confinement through Cretan lens versus Turkish. That is when I had decided to preserve the good of both cultures and refuse the not so good in either. Little did I know then, that in another decade I would have to practice the same between American culture versus Aegean culture.
One may wonder where all this contemplation comes from
during this trip to Turkey: Some of my childhood connections that I encountered
during this trip opened to path to deep listening and thinking… Unexpectedly, a
different awareness surfaced in my cognition: Especially those friends, with
whom we have not preserved an intimate closeness in continuity over the years
may provide the best opportunity to recognize where we are at on the spectrum
of openness to recognize and appreciate the evolution each one of us has gone
through as we have sailed through life… When one spends 7 years of their lives
in a special middle-high school complex day in day out, that may indeed set a
box for each one of us in the minds of each one of us, the confines of which
may have remained unchanged for the last 40 years.
Reunions until before the last decade with my high school friends were all about having fun, running over our collective memories from our school years, sharing our hopes for the future, when we were still raising families and still had more of our careers ahead of us… At age 58, a lot of my high school friends have retired, completed raising their children, diving into grandparenthood, things started having slightly changed. Are we approaching the stage to look back and assess what have lived and what we have not? How do we handle the lived-ness and unlived-ness of life’s wonders? How many of us will be able to process our pasts with the wisdom of impermanence, calm recognition, loving embrace, and peaceful carpa diem? Are we able to generate equanimity, loving kindness, and compassion toward each one of us and find true joy and peace in each one of us? Is all the laughter we savor around our raki table genuine and out of joy and happiness, or is some of it to escape the ache of some of our lived-ness and unlived-ness? How many of them do I truly know in depth to understand their joy and pain in full truth? How many of them know me in depth as the true me on this very day with all the growth struggles and joys of life gifted me with?
More and more, I am finding more satisfaction in one on one
meeting with friends and those I’d like to spend time with. Even a third person
in the conversation changes the rhetoric so drastically, let alone in a group
of 15-20? That is why I tried to spend 5-10 minutes of one on one time with
each friend at my high school reunion. That was the best time of the entire
evening with each one of them. Until I received the question when a group of us
was thoroughly enjoying themselves as 58 year young rowdy kids! I was asked
whether I had ever lost myself in such adventurous joy, ever taken risks
without thinking of what would have followed, essentially, whether I had had
fully lived or not at some point in my life. I remembered the value of pause. Especially, when something
unexpected is thrown at us, pause becomes the space we may gift ourselves with
before we respond to the surprise with mindful, kind, and compassionate speech.
In the past, I would have taken a question like this as the person criticizing me and that perception would have made me upset, disappointed, and to a certain extent angry. I bet all these emotions would have reflected in my speech. This time, the question he posed made me simply curious. Multiple questions went through my mind: Is this a question or a statement? If it is a statement, what does he base his perception on? When did that perception become solidified in his mind? Is he willing to learn me as who I am now? Are all of us full of similar solidified perceptions, most of which might be wrong? Thich Nhat Hanh states for true happiness, we should be committed to practicing generosity in our thinking, speaking, and actions. It is possible only with understanding and compassion. Loving speech and compassionate listening are two tools that not only relieve suffering in others but also promote reconciliation and peace both in ourselves and in others.
I
didn’t know if my friend knew any of this. I didn’t know if he was simply
inviting me to “letting it go” or confronting me with something that I have
confronted myself long long time ago… I wanted to believe that he was
compassionately letting me know that in case I had not let it go ever, it was
time to do so… The little Resmiye in this 58 year old body and history is grateful
to you my friend, luckily, she has already led the way to the adult Resmiye to
learn to enjoy the joys of life sometimes in laughter with little things,
sometimes in exertion of a hike to a mountain top, sometimes in dancing to a
melody in trance, and at least one time in making the leap across the Atlantic
with a 13 year old between her wings… And we are open to many more
opportunities of letting go in the years to come…
For years after I moved to the US, I thought, it was my family that practiced this confinement loaded with some elements of judgment, slight grandiosity, oppression in the name of protection, explosive expressivity, suffering over shame and guilt: My family has always been full of pride around being Cretan and having brought more western values to Anatolia, where most of native Turks had some decades ahead of them to catch up with the West, when the Cretans arrived in Turkey. They had kept their pride in hiding during the oppressive discrimination period in the early 1900s. Once they integrated into the dominant culture in the next couple of generations, more and more of that pride was released mostly in a benevolent manner, yet, still feeding into a subtle looking down on the native Turks and Turkish culture.
I also was forced to identify with the high expectations of this subculture for at least for several decades. Some of these expectations were good, hard work, honor, honesty, family values, excelling in anything you did… However, some of these virtues were also entangled with judgmental-ism, slight (perhaps not so slight, who knows) grandiosity or pride, shame and guilt… It wasn’t until my 30s that I finally started seeing that something in this subculture was not right. Individual rights and need for happiness were being sacrificed in the name of the well-being of the group all around me, which started alienating me from my roots. Perhaps I carried a subconscious awareness of that even during my childhood, which might have led to my refusal to learn Greek, the mother tongue of my grandparents. My parents had already integrated into Turkish-ness and dominant Turkish culture that became my natural path for couple of decades, also. During my late 20s early 30s, I started recognizing through this process of becoming fully Turkish that there was no difference between the confinement through Cretan lens versus Turkish. That is when I had decided to preserve the good of both cultures and refuse the not so good in either. Little did I know then, that in another decade I would have to practice the same between American culture versus Aegean culture.
Reunions until before the last decade with my high school friends were all about having fun, running over our collective memories from our school years, sharing our hopes for the future, when we were still raising families and still had more of our careers ahead of us… At age 58, a lot of my high school friends have retired, completed raising their children, diving into grandparenthood, things started having slightly changed. Are we approaching the stage to look back and assess what have lived and what we have not? How do we handle the lived-ness and unlived-ness of life’s wonders? How many of us will be able to process our pasts with the wisdom of impermanence, calm recognition, loving embrace, and peaceful carpa diem? Are we able to generate equanimity, loving kindness, and compassion toward each one of us and find true joy and peace in each one of us? Is all the laughter we savor around our raki table genuine and out of joy and happiness, or is some of it to escape the ache of some of our lived-ness and unlived-ness? How many of them do I truly know in depth to understand their joy and pain in full truth? How many of them know me in depth as the true me on this very day with all the growth struggles and joys of life gifted me with?
In the past, I would have taken a question like this as the person criticizing me and that perception would have made me upset, disappointed, and to a certain extent angry. I bet all these emotions would have reflected in my speech. This time, the question he posed made me simply curious. Multiple questions went through my mind: Is this a question or a statement? If it is a statement, what does he base his perception on? When did that perception become solidified in his mind? Is he willing to learn me as who I am now? Are all of us full of similar solidified perceptions, most of which might be wrong? Thich Nhat Hanh states for true happiness, we should be committed to practicing generosity in our thinking, speaking, and actions. It is possible only with understanding and compassion. Loving speech and compassionate listening are two tools that not only relieve suffering in others but also promote reconciliation and peace both in ourselves and in others.
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