Letters from Vietnam 59

16 January 2007

For my dear friend, I.Y.

I too, breaking out of old ways, had discovered solitude and the melancholy which is at the basis of religion. Religion turns that melancholy into uplifting fear and hope. But I had rejected the ways and comforts of religion; I couldn’t turn to them again, just like that. That melancholy about the world remained something I had to put up with my own. At some times it was sharp; at some times it wasn’t there.

V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, p.125

I have received a strange letter from a friend two days ago. I hope that this blog entry will find my dear friend.

I.Y. is one of my long-time friends since the beginning of university years. We have spent almost five years together in the school. While he left the community for a partial freedom with a few friends in the university, I was still a faithful devotee. Then I graduated ad moved to Thailand. He stayed in the school one more year. After he finished the university, he did his master’s degree in Istanbul. Then he went to Florida for PhD with his wife. In the last seven years I have been away from Turkey, we met twice in Istanbul. As old friends meet and talk, we did the same thing. He came to my brother’s house to visit in 2003. As I remembered it was a cheerful and happy chat. We have sent a few e-mails to each other in these seven years period. Mostly on important days like bayrams or new years…

I called his letter strange because of its content. His style is always the same. His words remind me voice of a desperate man who believes in paradoxes of life and his disbelief in solution is reflected indefinitely on the surfaces of mirrors of his words… His style, as a man of letters, did not change in the last seven years. In his letters, there is always sound of a man who looks for the truth and at the end blames the roads or guides for the failures. Some nostalgia –which I always like to read- and some pieces from the old days’ happy moments fill the beginnings of most of his letters. He always reminds me Kafka for his belief in inconsistencies. The difference between Kafka and him is clear. Kafka has been tortured by external forces and he uses these tortures to create his art. However I.Y. tortures himself with the belief in unhappiness. He seems like a naughty boy lost in the woods. Even though he has been shown the exit, he still insists that it could not be exit. There exists a kind of self-exile in his own world, a kind of desperate mood which does not want to end either because he likes it or because he does not know how to get out. He might need to know that he too deserves to be happy and it is not difficult at all… We don’t have to understand or know anything to be happy. In fact the more we know, the more we might demand and it might cost more trouble.

The content of his letter was strange because it was beyond my expectation. He asks me to return to God and His prophet. I was bewildered! He is the one who studies PhD in Chemistry and he is the one working on scientific experiments for last 10+ years. I even thought that the letter was written by someone else, not by my dear friend I.Y. However, it was written by him and he really asks me to resume to my old days. He is in a kind of psychological trauma or an emotional breakdown. What was he thinking? Going to Florida and having a PhD will make him the happiest man in the world? Or he will be satisfied with knowledge, with science or with other worldly pleasures? It took some time for me to understand his letter. I wrote him a short answer but my letter did not satisfy myself in terms of content. I love this man and I have to help him instead of accepting his offer to help me. I am not the one who is in need of help! I also mentioned this thing in my letter. I expect nothing in this life other than being a good man. I only want to make people around me happy with my presence and leave something worthy behind. I don’t need to believe in the beauties of heaven to be a good person or I don’t need to be scared with the tortures of hell to stay away from evil actions. Why is it so difficult for the believers that nonbelievers can be happy as much as the believers can? And why is so difficult for the believers that a pleasure can still be pleasure even though it is not infinite. Eating might be pleasurable and it is finite. Same as my own life, same as other pleasures! You do it, you enjoy it and you lose it. It is the cycle of life. What is wrong with the people is the belief in infinity. When people believe in infinity, then it becomes harder to make people relish with what they do. As Dawkins mentions in his latest book, why can’t we appreciate the garden without thinking that the garden is not infinite and without considering the gardener?

Another thing I have mentioned in my letter was about the peace of mind. Believers think that nonbelievers are always in the mood of hopelessness. We can not be happy because we do not believe in what they believe. Nonbelievers do not deserve to be happy because they believe in nothingness. Well, to be honest, I am quite happy with being nothing after death. I was nothing and I will be nothing. And I am brave enough to embrace this fact. Those who believe can not accept this fact because it hurts their selfish infinity theories. They want to exist forever. They don’t want to lose their mind and this ambition makes them believe more in what they are told. I think, the world was here before me and it will be continue to exist after me too. I don’t know how long more but people live on this earth without me. What will be left here are our names, our children, our deeds. And this is enough to be satisfied with the life. The more a person believes in infinity, the more he/she becomes its slave. Borges mentions in one of his short essay: There is one concept which troubles and destroys all others. I am not talking about evil, I am talking about infinity.

I don’t want to mention the inconsistencies in the beliefs or other logical/philosophical dilemmas in religions. It is another problem. What I want everyone knows is quite simple. It is very possible to live happily without believing in an omni-potent, omni-scient God and it is also very possible to be a good person without God. There are people who are bad even though they believe in God as many as there are bad people who denied the existence of God. The opposite is true as well. There are good people in both sides. Happiness or peace of mind depends on the expectations in this life. If you expect to find the truth via science or philosophy, you will never be satisfied. However, life is a journey and we live to seek for the truth, not to find it. Life has a meaning since we always feel that we are on the road and getting closer to the truth. The more we dig, the more we will clarify the pieces of jig-saw puzzle. Can we finish the puzzle? As Escher’s “Paint Gallery’ picture shows a signature of the artist at the middle of the square, the truth can never be completed. It is not because we are not able to complete it. It is because we are still at the beginning of the journey. And the more we will learn about ourselves, the realm of unknown will also get bigger. We will never get to the point where we can say this is the end. This is the dynamic which also makes our life goes on. Those who believe that they know the truth and they try to spread it to the others are the ones who are hurting people instead of helping them. Believing that my truth is the truth is a deadly disease. To believe that everyone must believe in my truth is deadlier… Here we can remember the famous words of Kahlil Gibran: Do not say I found the truth, rather say I found a truth.

Believing in an infinite life with other motivating ideas would be nice but I am afraid it will make me lazy. Because religion explains the things simply, once we believe, then there is no need to worry about anything. Everything can be explained by the will of God. Then why should I bother to seek for the truth? Why should I try to understand the book of nature? A religious person can answer this question with a nice twist: We study nature to understand our Lord better. However, what happens is whenever the scientific research shows a truth which contradicts with the God’s words, then science is being sacrificed for the sake of scripture. Isn’t evolution a good example for this?

I hope this blog entry will find my dear friend… I am thankful to his thoughtful care but still it does not change my mind. I left religious dogmas long ago and happened to believe in myself. I am happy with what I have and what I do in this life. I hope he also will find his truth as soon as possible and will leave life of no-solution. Whatever the truth he wants to believe, I respect his choice. As long as he is happy with what he believes and he is respectful to what I believe, he will be my dear friend, same as in the old days of Bogazici University, walking uphill from his house to the school, our arms are tied to each other, singing some old songs while shivering in the cold wind coming from the sea… Same as the days I prepared breakfast for him and his engineer friend and had trouble to wake them up, same as the days we met in the study room and talked about our love stories like my never-starting T-distribution or his enduring lovers, same as the day I have seen him first time carrying an umbrella for a girl and felt happy for him…