Between Everywhere and Nowhere

Tag: human nature

  • The Scale of Being Good and Nice™

    The Scale of Being Good and Nice™

    I do not take revenge. Because I am self-centered. Just a little bit.

    I would love to feel like a saint after realizing and confessing the first sentence, but it is what it is.

    What am I, then? Good and nice, or just strategic?

    Can choosing not to be harmful make you a good one automatically?

    Where is the line between goodness by instinct and goodness by choice?

    Is one more valuable than another? Can intention determine the quality of goodness? Does goodness have to carry a certain quality? Or is it just about the absence of harm?

    We have all been treated unfairly at some point. Betrayed. Gossiped about. Excluded.

    What was your reaction? What was your stance? What did you decide?

    If you ask me, I do nothing.

    At least, this is how it looks from the outside.

    No drama. No revenge.

    People around me sometimes criticize me for acting like a prophet. They expect some kind of reaction — perhaps anger or revenge, something that would make the situation feel more balanced.

    But when I think about my nothing-quality reaction, I realize that the serenity behind it does not come from my being a moral slave or a saint. It comes simply from self-centrism.

    I was simply emphasizing myself in my own life a little more.

    I was afraid that those people would put a wedge between the person I was today and the person I aspire to be tomorrow. So, I learned to remove people from my life when I felt that they were taking me somewhere I did not want to go.

    I chose not to spoil myself in their mud.

    Basic logic 101: you are no longer part of my life. And if you could treat me like that, then I was probably never truly a part of your life either.

    Maybe this was the ordinary of the ordinary.

    Maybe ruling over my free will was my ordinary way of testing the borders of who I was.

    Sorry to have the audacity to make it all about getting to know myself.

    I saw those kinds of situations as social experiments. I would play out, like, a hundred different scenarios in my head, just to see where they would take me.

    Doing the right thing was also feeding my subtle arrogance. There was something satisfying about knowing that I was the one who did not do the bad thing.

    What is required to do the bad thing or to be bad? Impulses? Lack of thought? Being afraid of spending time with yourself? Taking revenge because of what you are lacking in your default package of life? Something different?

    Sometimes it is good to enjoy the privilege of being the one who did nothing wrong — the one who does not have to carry the moral burden of the original act and is therefore free to decide what to do next.

    I am not talking about life-threatening events, of course. I am talking about the ordinary human situations where someone chooses to hurt you, and you still have the freedom to decide what you are going to do with that experience.

    There is an obvious comfort in putting your head on the pillow knowing that you did no harm to anybody.

    And perhaps this is why I keep coming back to being good and nice.

    But again, is it goodness in me, or just something that once helped my ancestors survive?

    Do you believe that human beings have a “tamable” good essence? Or is it simply our mastery of free will?

    Honestly, I do not think everyone has, or can have, a “good and nice” essence. Maybe none of us truly has one in our most plain forms.

    I sometimes think the problem with this narrative is that we take for granted that every human being has this “tamable” core.

    But how can we build the good and nice if this is the situation?

    Too much is expected from us while too little attention is paid to who we actually are and what we are capable of.

    I always end up returning to these questions: who we actually are, what we are capable of, how diverse and unified we can be at the same time?

    I sometimes realize that some people think that, at least, the outfit of good and nice does not suit them. Where is this perception or belief rooted? Why does “not being good and nice” become one’s persona?

    I came to realize that I do not take revenge simply because I am a proportionally self-centered person. This came from questioning myself: why did I not find dealing with that person worthy of my time?

    This attitude is something good and nice, actually. You choose not to get involved in the journey of someone who chooses not to be good and nice. It requires less effort spent on others, more respect for yourself. Kind of energy saving, on your own terms.

    This is where I invite “self-centrism” to the stage — not to create the good in me, but to help me sustain it.

    Serving good and nice, or abstaining from bad and harmful, may require a healthy self-centered mechanism rather than a holy essence in one.

    Sometimes all is that simple.

    I think we do not have to dive into the romantic set of thought of “carrying a good essence” if you feel this is not the situation for you. You are a human being, very unique and similar in a lot of ways.

    Sometimes serving something positive does not denote anything glorious at all. It does not prove that you carry some kind of holy essence.

    It is never about lacking the capacity to do harm. It is more about having that capacity and choosing not to use it — choosing not to do harm and doing the right thing.

    Following our impulses is one possibility. Choosing something that requires more from us is another.

    Maybe the key is facing our primitive core and seeing what good and nice our advanced core can achieve with it.

    It may be as simple as that. If you dare to face whatever pulls you by the arm along the way.

    Artwork: One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Wang Ximeng

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  • Mind Your Own Mind

    Mind Your Own Mind

    What makes you who you are?

    Your name?

    Your nationality?

    Your profession?

    Your family?

    They all tell a part of your story. But if someone were to quietly remove every label attached to you, I believe there would still be one thing left.

    Your mind.

    Not simply your thoughts, but your way of perceiving, interpreting, remembering, imagining, fearing, and hoping. The invisible place through which every experience must pass before it becomes yours.

    If I had to describe the mind in one sentence, I would say this:

    It is the ultimate digestion of our lives.

    Some experiences are unavoidable—the main course served to every one of us. Others are chosen deliberately, like the appetizers we pick ourselves: the books we read, the people we love, the conversations we revisit, the fears we rehearse, the songs that become memories, and the ideas we repeatedly feed ourselves.

    Our minds digest all of them.

    Eventually, they become us.

    Perhaps this is why I find it difficult to separate myself from my mind. Knowing my own mind feels remarkably close to knowing myself.

    We spend remarkable amounts of time protecting what matters to us.

    We monitor our blood pressure, check our cholesterol, apply sunscreen, lock our doors, and create increasingly complicated passwords. We have become more willing than ever to talk about mental health, and I am genuinely glad we do.

    Yet I sometimes wonder whether we have become so focused on repairing the mind that we forget to become acquainted with it.

    Most conversations begin only after something goes wrong.

    Stress.

    Burnout.

    Anxiety.

    Depression.

    Exhaustion.

    Only then that we ask what the mind needs.

    But perhaps there is another question worth asking long before that.

    What kind of mind do I actually have?

    Not the ideal mind promoted by productivity books.

    Not the perfectly balanced mind described on social media.

    Not someone else’s mind.

    Mine.

    What calms it?

    What overwhelms it?

    What makes it curious?

    What quietly exhausts it?

    Perhaps the healthiest relationship with our minds begins not by trying to optimize them, but by learning their language.

    Have you ever noticed what almost every horror story has in common?

    Before the monster attacks the body, it attacks the mind.

    The victim begins doubting reality.

    They stop trusting their memories.

    They question what is real.

    Long before physical danger arrives, the real battlefield has already moved inward.

    The greatest horror has never been seeing a monster.

    It has always been losing confidence in your own perception.

    Ghosts, haunted houses, and demons become frightening only after they convince someone that their own mind is no longer a trustworthy place to live.

    That idea has always fascinated me.

    Even the creatures we imagine existing beyond human understanding somehow know the shortest path to defeating us.

    Not through the body. Through the mind.

    Perhaps horror stories remind us of something we rarely acknowledge.

    The mind is where reality first takes shape.

    Stress alone can produce genuine physical symptoms. Health anxiety can persuade someone that ordinary bodily sensations signal serious illness. A person may continue feeling pain in a limb that no longer exists because the brain still carries its map. There are even neurological conditions in which someone may no longer recognize a perfectly healthy part of their own body as belonging to them.

    These examples are very different from one another.

    Yet they all point toward the same conclusion.

    Reality is not merely something that happens to us.

    It is also something interpreted by the mind.

    That realization makes the mind both our greatest strength and our greatest vulnerability.

    It shapes how we see ourselves.

    How we respond to uncertainty.

    How we regulate anger.

    How we trust.

    How we love.

    How we forgive.

    How we decide whether to continue—or finally stop.

    If there is a remote control for our lives, I suspect it is the mind.

    This is why I have become increasingly interested in paying attention to my own.

    Not improving it. Not optimizing it. Simply getting to know it.

    I have no formal education in psychology or neuroscience, apart from a few unforgettable psycholinguistics courses that first made me realize how mysterious the mind truly is.

    I am simply an ordinary person who depends on it every single day.

    As someone who works with languages and translation, I know what it feels like for the mind to continue working long after the laptop has been closed. Sentences quietly keep rewriting themselves while I make coffee or walk down the street.

    Over time, I have realized that my mind has preferences just as individual as my personality.

    Perhaps yours does too.

    Maybe your mind genuinely enjoys crowded cafés.

    Maybe mine prefers silence.

    Maybe someone else’s mind settles after running five kilometers.

    Maybe mine simply wants to spend an hour beneath the warm glow of a floor lamp with a novel while the rest of the world quietly waits outside.

    No article can tell us these things.

    No expert can answer them for us.

    Only our own minds can.

    Perhaps learning to know them is a form of respect we rarely speak about.

    Our minds accompany every second of our existence without ever introducing themselves. 

    We usually notice them only when something begins to fail. 

    Maybe we should become familiar with them before that moment.

    Not because every uncomfortable feeling needs fixing.

    Not because we should become obsessed with protecting our minds.

    But because they are irreplaceable.

    We spend a lifetime trying to understand the world.

    Perhaps we should also spend some time understanding the only place from which we will ever experience it.

    Our own mind.

    Perhaps mind your own business was never the advice we needed.

    Perhaps we should begin somewhere even closer.

    Mind your own mind.

    Because every experience in your life will pass through only one place before it becomes yours.

    Your own mind.

    And perhaps knowing that mind is the closest you will ever come to knowing yourself.

    Artwork: The Sun, Edvard Munch

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  • The Ordinary Roots of Arrogance

    The Ordinary Roots of Arrogance

    The quality of being unpleasantly proud.
    Behaving as if you are more important or knowledgeable than others.

    These are the usual connotations of the word arrogance.

    When looking at dictionary definitions, arrogance seems to emerge from a feeling of superiority. However, is that always the case?

    These kinds of terms are often associated with illusionary perceptions of the self. But what if the opposite is also true?

    Can a person carry a certain type of arrogance simply because they are too aware of themselves?

    Why is it rarely considered that self-awareness itself can become a legitimate reason for wrapping ourselves in the silk fabric of arrogance?

    Does it always have to be something negative? Does it always distance us from our surroundings in an illusionary way?

    I have always known that my way of thinking did not appeal to many people in many situations. Once, when I had the chance, I wanted to transfer my messy way of thinking onto a blank white paper and use all the non-traditional connections in my writing. The result? Of course I failed.

    At the time, one of my professors anonymously used my paper as an example of failure in class. Although I had literally failed, it did not feel destructive. Rather, I saw it as a chance to observe how my way of thinking was perceived within my own habitat.

    After that, I decided to keep the genuine side of my mental world to myself and started using my mind in saving mode, literally. I began analyzing the way that professor was thinking. It turned into a small experiment for me. I noted the words he used, his sentence structures, the way his mind connected subjects and pulled arguments from one point to another. I think one of the best parts of being a student is having enough time for these kinds of observations.

    Anyway, that day came and I had a second chance to write freely again. Was it really me writing those thoughts, or was I simply pretending? I still do not know.

    I filled that paper while imagining myself as if I were that professor. What would he write if this were his assignment?

    My second paper was declared the perfect assignment, by the way.

    You may ask, “We started with arrogance and somehow arrived at an ordinary memory that anyone could experience.” But I think the real question is this: where is the border between being arrogant and carrying yourself with a certain degree of arrogance?

    For me, it was realizing to what extent I was being accepted, and to what extent I could bend myself if I truly wanted to fit in. It was also realizing how ordinary I actually was.

    At some point, I also realized that what I truly thought, or who I genuinely was, was rarely important to most environments in the first place. People usually accepted the version of you that functioned well enough within the structure around them.

    After noticing this, I think I started leaving only a measured amount of ordinariness behind me wherever I went. Just enough to fit naturally into the atmosphere, but never enough to feel entirely dissolved inside it.

    Knowing my own limits and ordinariness strangely brought me a sense of arrogance throughout the years. It created a subtle separation between me and others. Because I was fully aware of myself, with both my strengths and weaknesses, I knew I could tame myself accordingly if necessary.

    That self-control, and perhaps self-manipulation towards the outer world, became the main fabric of my arrogance.

    Everyone else was ordinary too. The only difference was that many people were not fully aware of it yet.

    Sometimes the feeling of superiority can come from being absolutely grounded.

    Sometimes I ask myself: could arrogance also be a way of coping with having a painfully solid place in this world? Being ordinary in the most ordinary way can also hurt. Then you start thinking: “I achieved, I endured, I learned, and I still remained within this ordinariness.”

    That is usually the moment when a subtle arrogance taps you lightly on the back, wraps itself around you, and quietly becomes your shadow.

    Maybe arrogance is not always born from illusion.

    Sometimes it grows quietly from knowing exactly where you stand.

    Who knows.

    Artwork: The Travelling Companions, Augustus Leopold Egg

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  • We Float on a Planet and Yet…

    We Float on a Planet and Yet…

    We actually live on a planet.
    Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Literally.

    A massive sphere drifting through an endless universe, carrying oceans, mountains, cities and us.

    And yet, most of the time, we hardly feel it.
    We wake up, scroll, work, eat, sleep, as if this is the only reality there is.
    As if the ground beneath our feet were fixed, stable, permanent.
    As if we were not suspended in space at this very moment.

    Sometimes I catch myself looking around and wondering how much of this I truly notice.
    How aware are we of the world we inhabit?
    Or more unsettling: do we really belong to it?

    Because when you think about it, the planet is not equally welcoming everywhere.
    Some places freeze you.
    Some burn you.
    Some suffocate you.
    Some simply do not allow you to stay.
    It is as if the Earth quietly draws invisible boundaries, deciding:
    Here, you may live.
    Here, you may not.

    For most species, that is the end of the story.
    They live where they can.
    And nowhere else.

    Humans, however, are different.

    Not long ago, I watched a couple of videos that stayed with me long after they ended.
    Not only because they were spectacular, but also because they made something very clear: we do not truly belong to some places on our own planet.

    In one, ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel climbs Everest without supplemental oxygen.
    Not rushing, just moving one step at a time. At that altitude, even breathing is uncertain. Each step grows heavier than the last. Not because the mountain is steep, but because the body resists where it is.

    His rhythm is no longer his own; it is dictated by oxygen, sunlight, survival.
    It does not look like mere freedom.
    It looks like freedom in negotiation.

    In another, explorer Chris Brown and his team journey to Point Nemo, the most remote place in the ocean.
    The deeper they go, the more their bodies resist.
    Dizziness. Nausea. Vomiting.
    It feels as if the water itself pushes them back, a reminder that this was never meant for us.

    And yet, they persist.
    Not because the place suddenly becomes hospitable, but because we find ways to exist within it.
    And this is what struck me.

    In these moments, I did not merely witness landscapes or feats.
    I saw what happens when humans refuse to accept the boundaries of where they are “allowed” to be.

    We do not simply remain where it is easy.
    We go where it is difficult: climbing where there is no oxygen, diving under crushing pressure.
    We live in extremes of cold, heat, isolation.
    And somehow, we endure.

    Not because the planet grows gentle, but because we adapt.

    And here is the most fascinating part:
    It is not only our bodies that adapt.
    It is our minds.
    Our curiosity.
    Our determination.
    Our intelligence.
    And, perhaps above all, our culture.

    We do not face the world alone.
    We create knowledge. We share it. We build upon it.
    We develop tools, technologies, and ways of living that allow us to survive in places never meant for us.

    We turn the “impossible” into the “manageable.”
    We observe. We learn. We strategize.
    Step by step, we expand the map of where we can exist.

    And sometimes I wonder: is this adaptation or something else entirely?
    Are we learning how to belong?
    Or simply refusing to accept that we do not?

    Perhaps the planet does draw boundaries. But humans are the only species that negotiate with them.

    We do not merely accept limits.
    We test them. We stretch them.
    Sometimes, we even redefine them entirely.

    In doing so, we transform not only our environment, but ourselves.
    We are shaped by the planet, yet constantly reshaping our place within it.
    And that tension is mesmerizing.

    It leaves us suspended somewhere in between.
    Between restriction and freedom.
    Between nature and intention.
    Between being placed and choosing where to stand.

    Perhaps this is what it means to be human:
    Not simply to adapt, but to learn how to move within the world.
    We may not belong everywhere. Yet still, we keep going.

    🎨 Cloud Study, 1822, John Constable

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