You are a little chick, freshly hatched from your egg. You have just opened your eyes for the first time. All the ducks are yellow, and so are you, but you are much more beautiful than the others. You are special. One day, you decide to leave, and you encounter a lizard. You wonder what it is because you have never seen one before. You find it strange, yet you like it because it has a very special color, just like you...
In 2021, while the pandemic was still very much a part of our lives, an article published in The New York Times described a new state that had become increasingly common among people. This widespread condition, called "languishing," was defined as something that was neither full burnout nor clinical depression, but rather a persistent sense of joylessness and aimlessness. Today, the Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as "to exist [...]"
Writing about migration was something that came to my mind long before I ever sat down at the keyboard. Yet, because of its layered and complex nature, it always felt like anything I wrote would inevitably be incomplete — and that feeling often stopped me from writing at all. Eventually, I realized that migration and incompleteness are already intertwined; who am I to attempt to define migration in a way that feels complete? At its simplest, migration means movement. A [...]
If we had a "word-o-meter" to measure which phrases people used most often in December, there’s no doubt that words like "from now on," "starting today," and "from this point forward" would rank at the top. There is certainly something invigorating and energizing about the strong connection between entering a new year and making resolutions. As a psychotherapist, I can confidently say that people are far more likely to seek therapy not during the summer, but rather in the [...]
It is known that around one and a half years after our birth, as our language skills develop, we begin to understand opposing concepts. However, even before words become tools for us, we start to learn this at a sensory level — encountering the first contradiction in life through the presence versus absence of our caregiver’s nurturing behaviors. When we interact with a small baby, we instinctively cover our face with our hands and "disappear" momentarily to create that joyful reaction, even though [...]
Premiering in 2018 on a streaming platform, Şahsiyet (Persona) tells the story of the intersecting paths of Agâh Bey and Nevra. The series, a drama/crime story, was crowned with even greater success when Haluk Bilginer won the "Best Performance by an Actor" award at the 47th International Emmy Awards. Now returning to its audience with a second season, Şahsiyet follows Agâh, a sixty-five-year-old retired judicial officer living alone in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district. [...]
I believe that part of the reason why people love series and films so much lies in this paradox: on one hand, we know what we see on screen is a distant fiction; on the other hand, somewhere deep inside, we sense the possibility that it might touch our own reality. Looking at films, series, and books has long been, and continues to be, a valuable reference point for understanding human nature. I, too, [...]