The Gift of Being Able to Start

I was going through one of the times when my master’s degree was proving challenging when I came across this sentence.

On the 18th of February, some of the problems I had been struggling with had finally been resolved, my road had become a little smoother, and I had begun to see my way forward again. On my way home, I bought myself a bouquet of flowers. The mental clutter that had occupied my mind for quite some time had, naturally, spilled over into my home as well. After arranging the flowers in a vase and opening the windows, I slowly began to tidy up the house.

At times like these, I usually look for something to play in the background. A song, perhaps, or a podcast. That moment, feeling more open to new things than I had in a very long time, I found myself reaching for a podcast. The moment I saw the first title that appeared on the homepage, I knew I had stumbled upon something that would strike a chord with me. A podcast channel I love, Ortamlarda Satılacak Bilgi (only available in Turkish) had released a new episode that very day: Mükemmel Olmadan Mutlu Olmak (Being Happy Without Being Perfect).

Perfectionism has been a part of my life ever since my childhood. For years, I believed that it was unquestionably beneficial. I tried to do everything in the best, the rightest, the most beautiful way. More often than not, I was rewarded. I succeeded, I was appreciated, I was loved. It was only after moving to Istanbul for work and beginning to truly wrestle with life that I started to notice the other side of perfectionism—the side that can wear someone down and leave her feeling stuck. It was true that perfectionism had its benefits, yes. But what, exactly, was a person giving up in pursuit of perfection? What parts of her life, and of themselves, were she sacrificing along the way?

Last year, I became quite literally captivated by a musical I watched in London. I wanted to make that admiration unforgettable, and I thought perhaps I could do so through writing. I used to write when I was little; I loved it. In fact, my mother and I even started a blog for me once—I can remember it. And I still love writing. That was why I wanted to create a kind of journal where I could make a collection of my experiences and give them greater depth. I even took notes about the musical and the stage production for that purpose. But at the time, so much was happening in my life, and time seemed to be moving incredibly fast. Perhaps with that musical, a book I had read and loved, a place I had visited and adored, a film that had deeply moved me, was simply swept away and forgotten in the current of it all. But why? The truth is, I genuinely wanted my experiences to become more than just individual lines on my lists. Yet I did not want to do something ordinary. I kept waiting for the right moment—the moment when I would be able to make something beautiful enough to begin with. And that right moment, however, never seemed to arrive. “I’ll get to it once these clouds clear”, I kept telling myself. Every time I gave up, Selim’s bittersweet words from Oğuz Atay’s (famous Turkish writer) Tutunamayanlar (book available in English as "The Disconnected") echoed in my mind: “I never hung a painting for fear that it might be a bad one; I never lived for fear that I might live badly.”

As I listened to that podcast episode on the 18th of February, there was only one thing on my mind. Sometimes, one simply has to do something. Without thinking about why, how, when, or how much. To be able to start... As I thought through, my eyes kept drifting back to the flowers in the vase; every single time, they made me smile. Those flowers reminded me that day of just how much colour and beauty there is in life.

And that day, I decided that I do not want to miss life, and catch the colours. Somewhere within the flow of life—perhaps from within the clouds themselves, but somehow—I decided that I wanted to catch the them. Because I know the clouds will never completely clear. Perhaps the sky will feel lighter at times, perhaps the seasons will change, but the clouds will always be there in one form or another. That is precisely why one must learn to live with them. Because where there are clouds, there is life. Because where there are clouds, there are rainbows. There are colours.

I’m Ece.

From the clouds.

I am beginning to make a collection of my life.

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