AWAKE!!

Awake means- not in a state of sleep. In Turkish, it carries another meaning along with it. It is a word that is used in a sentence for parents telling their children for the last 25 years. “Son, learn to be awake at all times”.

What it translates to is being alert to all situations that can be taken advantage of. To accomplish anything in life you have to be “awake”, being intelligent, assiduous, good, or even lucky is not enough. Especially being good is considered not a positive attribute but an attribute synonymous to stupid. You have to be and act awake to push back other candidates with similar attributes.

I was not aware of this being a prevalent practice particular to my country until I lived and visited other countries. When I was younger I thought we were brave and smart for tricking foreign systems. Be it train tickets we don’t have to pay for unless busted without them, CDs we purchased by mail using dead president names for recipient names but our addresses, stereos we used and returned before their return period, I thought we were pretty good at fooling very fragilely built systems on trust.

When I returned back to Turkey after staying 5 years overseas, the forks of acts I thought laudable started to irritate me at first, and then disgust me. Being awake is at its full now in my country. Queues at airports, banks, bus stops are needless because some awake people think they are not worthy of waiting, they cut in front of others without any plausible explanation, and others, so gullible in their belief in their worthlessness, do not question this, they let other people cut in front of them because they believe if they cut in front of them, they are of course right at doing so. Sometimes you can hear some feeble protests but at the end, usually awake people are pretty loud and are good with their words and attitude, they push back the protester where he belongs, at the very best right behind them! And these conducts are everywhere, the awakes have infiltrated every possible institution, home, work, school. The awakes get higher on every ladder, stepping on others on their way up. Their success gives birth to awake wanna-bes, who like petty criminals are larger in numbers and less subtle in their activities.

I feel literally disgusted at this, I have no problem tricking a system, fooling a government or any institution. My problem is with people believing themselves to be superior to others in doing these acts, and when their thoughts turn to actions the results actulally make them superior. Taking advantage of systems and intstitutions or even specific situations makes life unfair then it already is. Trust becomes impossible and wihout trust all relationships between people and/or institutions turn into a Orwellian nightmare.