Fake it then you make it

Fake it then you make it

24/05/12

Lately I've been thinking why we are on earth. What's the purpose? Nothing new, it’s been thought by many, including me, before. But this time my answer is different. And it scares me.

5 months ago, I had my very first general anaesthetics at the age of 25. The experience was so much more different than what I expected it would be. It is all so vague to me but as far as I remember, I, or my soul, went to a different space. It wasn't earth. Or it wasn't a universe for that matter. It wasn't a place. I'm calling it a space because my mind -and possibly yours too- cannot go beyond the boundaries of logic. If you are there it has to be somewhere right? Our mind could possibly not deal with the idea of nowhere, now that would be nonsense, wouldn't it? So, I call it space.

In this space, I believe I felt bliss. I felt like everything made sense and I knew what and why and how. I belonged to the space. And I wasn't alone. There were others. I want to call them angels. I know you now have a picture of an angel in your mind and think I'm crazy. Remember, this is all in my mind so anything is possible (including me being crazy) but these people were angels not because how they looked but because how they made me feel when I was with them. They were the bliss themselves.

Then, suddenly, I heard the anaesthetist’s voice: "Beril, Beril, wake up, the surgery is over." And just like that I was torn away from that space, was forced to land back on earth. Before even opening my eyes, the first words that I uttered were: "how come?" At the time I thought this meant that I couldn't believe it all went so quick and that the surgery was over. A logical explanation. But when I look back at the whole experience and how I feel now, I feel as though it meant more. How come I was sent back to earth? What had gone wrong? Why couldn't I stay there?

When I opened my eyes, I was on a table moving towards my room. My mom was walking beside me. I burst into tears. "Mommy, I don't want to wake up!" My mom started crying too. "Sweetheart, why are you crying?" "Mommy, I don't want to wake up."

As a scientist, I  always thought babies cried because the first air they inhaled was opening up their lung tissue for the first time and it was painful. When I woke up, yes I had a sore throat because of the irritaion/pain caused by the endotracheal tube, but I realized pain wasn't the only reason why we cried. Babies - and I- cried because they knew it meant a life on earth. They knew they weren't in their comfort zone, the space, anymore and it meant a lifelong suffering. And don't get me wrong, I only call it suffering because compared to what they/we feel in the space, this is suffering.

This got me into thinking. Why do we leave the space and come on to earth? Was the story of Adam and Eve right all along? Was this a punishment? Or was this something even more? More like having to learn and to earn to be happy in a world where we are supposed to suffer or where we actually ARE suffering? Could this learning process be a step in getting closer to be divine? What does divine mean anyway? Filling that -all so experienced by many- void? The feeling of completeness? The understanding of existence?

Whatever the answer is, I am convinced that we are on earth to suffer, besides many things. It is up to us to minimize that suffering but happiness is overrated. There is no happiness. There is less suffering which we call it happiness. Happiness doesn't exist on earth, at least not to the level that it exists in space. Happiness on earth is less suffering: something that we need to learn and create. It comes more natural to us as babies or children to be happy because we just landed on earth and we are connected to the space. With time and experience we forget it. We lose happiness that we brought with us. It is our duty to learn and to create it again; to be happy; to force ourselves to be happy; to suffer less.

It feels spurious to force oneself to be happy. But I once was told: "Fake it then you make it". I can say I am not happy but I try to minimize the suffering of myself and of others every day. I fake my happiness and I don't think I lose anything by doing so. You wouldn't either, so just fake it. Maybe one day we'll make it, huh?

Human mind is complicated.

17/09/13

Or all that I have said is nonsense. It was the side effect of the drugs I was given and purely my vivid imagination. I don’t even know what kind of sedatives or anaesthetics I had but I am familiar with hallucinogenic effects of some. It is quite possible they allowed me to dive deep into my subconscious and to combine my beliefs and dreams with my imagination to craft “the space”.

And maybe not everyone has to suffer. True happiness exists but is hidden in moments. Catching the moments is the goal of our lives. Happiness comes hand in hand with suffering just because we need a reminder to understand its true meaning and appreciate its worth. Suffering only exists for the gist of happiness and not the other way around. And “the space” is only a place of our imagination; it is a merely a creation of our desire for the everlasting, the ultimate happy ending.

There is no right or wrong; it is only our perception of what is right or wrong. And that can change day to day. What we believed in one day might not even make any sense another day. We change our minds constantly and quite frequently.

Humankind is surprising.  

Beril

Imprint of writing

I am afraid of writing. Whenever I write, something comes out – something I have not been able to elaborate before, something that overwhelms all my senses. Writing paralyzes the daily mask; it is a revelation of not only one-self, but many-. Its endurance and amorphousness is what makes it out of the ordinary and out of an order; it has no beginning, middle or end as one thing leads to another, then back to the first and to the latter again. It is like swinging back and forth. You want to hold on to the second when the swing stops before taking you to the other direction, yet you let it take over you. When you finally get your bearings you have two choices: to stop the swing completely or to jump out, whilst letting it out or letting it rock some more in the back, of your mind.

I am afraid of writing. Whenever I write, I have an out-of-body experience. It is as if I am watching my fingers type, and it feels as they are a separate being. I cannot control what word is going to come, one after another. My head is in the clouds; so many thoughts come and go. If one could listen to the voice of my mind, one would hear the voice of chaos. One would hear the fight between antonyms: the sense in a form of nonsense, the subconscious in a conscious manner. The connection between my mind and my hands is the one that pulls the experience back into my body and allows me to relate to what I wrote, scaring me of what I am capable of or not.

I am afraid of writing. Whenever I write, I am tricked by the power of words. It is a game of hide and seek. The more I seek for a certain word, the more it hides the meaning. One hidden word is sought in different ways when read in different dimensions of reality at different slices of time. A word is like a platonic lover. You can feel it so well that you think you wrapped your arms around it, but the image is your imagination; you can never really get it. It is solely a sweet ploy played by your own mind. Thus; a word is bitterly mind-blowing and writing is committing a necessary crime at war time: a glorious mistake, an indecent virtue.

I am afraid of writing, but I still do as my inquisitiveness overrides my fright; my ingenuity, my habits; and my perseverance, my reluctance. I write because I am used to finding my way out whenever I get lost among words, but not to losing them. Without the written words, I feel incomplete; it is a feeling of nonexistence of my existence. It is like filing a missing persons report. On paper, words are existent, but on your mind, they are meaningless; they seem to be deceased with the disappearance of a loved one. And so I write against the pain or the fear or the remorse. I write no matter what it takes away from me and my past or brings it on to me and my future. I write because I am present.

Beril
20/04/10-4/05/10

Deneme 1

I don’t know why, I just feel like I shouldn’t post anything here but my poems. I feel like anything less than a poem is not worth sharing or is not worth taking space in my blog. I feel as though whatever I write, it just won’t have a literary context. This is my attempt to overcome my fear of not being able to produce a literary piece and my trial for expressing my feelings in colloquial and conversational terms.

I was talking to my friend P. the other day. We discussed how we lived our life and found out really interesting results. As she put it very eloquently: “(we were) living the globally migrant life imperatively on fast forward, rushing through the days, places and people.”

When you change your residential location quite often, you come across many difficulties. Yes, it’s a wonderful experience to get to know lots of different people with diverse backgrounds, yes, it’s breathtaking to learn to live in a different setting, to familiarize with different cultures and to integrate those new aspects you’ve learned into your own perspective of life. But… There is always a but… While going through this “transitioning phase” (that’s what I call it) in a hurry, you miss so many other things such as catching up with your own soul!

You might think that you are now used to this fast-forward life style. Let’s say, you are. How about others? People you encounter will not understand your rush and they won’t join you in this run. They have their own settled lives. They like to take their time, sit back and enjoy the ride. They do not want to run to some place which “won’t be found betimes”[i] anyway! Why should they? Why are you?

I know why I have been running at least. It’s the transitioning phase. I was so scared of the emptiness of each day that passed by. I was so bored out of my mind, I was afraid of living my life without any mind-blowing experience, or in other words in a routine. I was hungry for… for a lot of different things. And most importantly, I was impatient. That’s why I tried to push myself to my limits. And I (almost) did. (I got to admit there is still some room left). Like an amish kid turning on 16 and leaving for the rumspringa, I was hectic yet innocent at the beginning. And at the end of my own rumspringa, I realized I’m fed up with “meeting and passing”[ii]. Instead of running back home scared, I decided to face the facts and find my place in this globally migrant living. I decided to settle down and try to end the phase of transitioning as much as I can. I decided to slow down the flow of my life and learn to do things because I want to, not because of any time restraints or any fear from whatsoever. I decided to accept the consequences before throwing myself into a new journey. If I can’t, I decided to stay back and wait for another journey to lure me in.

Yes, as much as it sounds impossible, I’m going to take things easy. And I recommend those of you who are on the same page with me just to take your time. If something is supposed to happen, it will. You can make things happen right away by rushing, but not the way you want them to be. I know, it’s hard to accomplish but I also know for a fact that you actually can if you really want it!

Beril
05/10/09

P.S.:I think I'm going to date things by the European standards from now on.. (e.g. day/month/year).

[i] Road Trippin by Beril. See http://berilika.blogspot.com/2009/09/road-trippin.html
[ii] “Meeting and Passing” by Robert Frost. See http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/12079#