stillbecoming.studio

This morning on my way to a friend’s house, I saw a few people gathered around a car with its hood up. Even though I wondered what was going on, I’m not usually one to get involved in street crowds. I was just about to walk past them when I heard a kitten crying pitifully from inside. I stopped immediately to see what was happening.

As it turned out, a tiny kitten had gotten stuck deep inside the engine bay under that open hood. You know how they love slipping into those warm, hidden spots. I guess the saying “curiosity killed the cat” exists for a reason!

Of course, from that moment on, I became a part of that crowd. Then another person joined, and another, and before we knew it, we were a pretty big team. Everyone was suggesting a solution, everyone was looking for a way out. The number of people around the car kept growing, and we all had one single goal: getting that little kitten out of there without a scratch.

After a while, the little rascal found its own way and popped out from under the car. By then, another group was already standing by, forming a human barricade so it wouldn’t dash into the street.

The incredible energy of collective goodness in the air completely blew me away. Men, women, old, young, kids… people who you would probably never see standing side by side in your entire life. Everyone’s focus, everyone’s goal was exactly the same: saving that tiny kitten. Nobody was in a rush; even if they were, they didn’t care. The only priority was the safety of that little soul.

Once the kitten was safe, I looked at the faces around me. Everyone was so happy, so relieved. People were high-fiving, shaking hands, patting each other on the back. This moment might seem completely trivial to someone else, but for a brief moment, it made me feel so incredibly happy. Witnessing the collective power created by simple goodness, recognizing it—it’s just a wonderful feeling.

As I kept walking, a few tears and a sort of sorrowful joy filled my soul and accompanied my steps. Yes, my joy was sorrowful, because I knew this exact scenario would play out differently from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, or country to country. Sadly, the value given to a tiny kitten can completely change depending on geographic and cultural mindsets.

Of course, I’m not naive enough to believe that everything in life can be solved with just kindness. The world is a center of balance, existing precisely through its opposites. Goodness means nothing without evil, and beauty holds no value where there is no ugliness.

Human beings are just like this universe; we carry both good and bad inside us. The modern, trendy term for the “bad” inside us is our shadow sides, and their existence is undeniable. I don’t really believe in a flawless human model made up purely of goodness. In this struggle to survive, there are times when our shadow sides simply have to take the wheel to protect who we are. Just like a seesaw—the side going down is just as necessary as the side going up to keep the balance.

Yet, for the past few years, it feels like the world is being ruled entirely by negativity, and we are all getting more than our share of it. The decisions made by this darkness lead to wars, people die, the world becomes a harder place to live in. Some of us struggle with financial hardships, while others find it difficult to cope emotionally.

From time to time, we start believing that goodness has run its course on earth, and that from now on, only negativity will rule.

To be honest, I was genuinely starting to believe this myself. Sure, good things were happening in the world, but their numbers and impact seemed so small, almost as if they weren’t even worth noticing. That was until I watched an interview with Professor Selçuk Şirin. The actual topic was about limiting children’s and teenagers’ relationship with social media. But there was one specific sentence he said that I cherry-picked, and it gave me so much hope. He said:

“Five algorithm bosses rule the world; they pump fear and negativity to design societies, and they build the necessary infrastructure to make sure it lands right in front of us on social media. When we look at it from a historical perspective, the world isn’t going through its worst period ever—in fact, there are so many good things happening! But the algorithm bosses want us to believe that negativity is the main character.”

I guess goodness just doesn’t have the same news value as negativity. As humans, we are naturally more curious about the bad, the unusual. We chase the negativity, we watch it, and then naturally, we get anxious. Reel videos focusing on disaster scenarios spread from person to person, turning into a spiral of “I got scared, now you get scared too!”

At the end of the day, instead of pocketing and remembering all the good things we experience, we magnify everything bad inside ourselves, put it at the very top, and code ourselves with these negative emotions. But the most important thing we need to realize is that the world maintains its existence through a system of balance. Just because the bad makes more noise and is more visible doesn’t mean the world has become an entirely evil place.

Let’s keep believing in the quiet, deep, healing power of goodness in our individual lives. Let’s not fall victim to empty content and algorithms that feed us fear.

With love,

Nazan

If These Piece had a Color : It would be ”Ocean Blue”.

If These Piece had a Song : It would be ”Michael Jackson – Man in The Mirror ”. https://open.spotify.com/track/3U5JVgI2x4rDyHGObzJfNf?si=f9047821d23d42ac

If These Piece had a Scen : It would be ”Jasmine Blossom”