It was fifteen years ago. We had slipped out of the factory and lay down on sacks of raw materials outside, talking side by side while looking at the sky like brothers.
“So what happens when we start making money?”
My friend Emre was an engineer. “I want to produce handcrafted motorcycles and classic cars,” he said. “But I will build the most original ones in Turkey. I’ll make two a year, then rest the whole year… What about you, brother?”
I would not work at all—I would only make art, write novels, perhaps even learn to play an instrument. I could not remain just a pipe worker forever. I did not want to die as just another ordinary person among millions.
It was a summer day. In that cloudless sky, the stars seemed so abundant and so joyful that for a brief moment, we believed in what we were telling each other.
Much time passed. Our dreams were softened and reshaped by the difficult years of the country.
The idea that art alone was not enough, and needed to be blended with goodness, gradually became dominant.
Now we were dreaming more mature dreams.
First, we took part in social responsibility projects individually. Then we gradually began planning to establish a foundation.
Our urge to do good was so strong that over the last five or six years you could find us planting trees one day, providing scholarships to children the next, and sending libraries to remote villages of Anatolia another day.
We were doing countless unspoken acts of goodness. We were lightening our souls.
We had spent twenty years in business. Our tired and worn souls were healed with every act of goodness. We had become addicted to it.
Whatever we did, we were ultimately doing it most for ourselves.
Over all these years, although I realized I could not become an artist, I also knew that a life without art was not possible.
Art was a miraculous teacher.
Who knows how many books, songs, and poems shaped who I am today.
Art was as necessary as goodness for nourishing our souls.
We owed gratitude to art itself.
I was thinking: Why do I exist? Why am I still no different from millions of ordinary people?
As I approached forty, with my past, present, and future, I could finally sense the closest answers to these questions.
Why do I exist, O Gökyüzü? What should I do?
I could feel the answers: children, art, and goodness.
The closest realization of a childhood dream was the Gökyüzü Artistic Goodness Foundation.
Children. Art. Goodness.
And the infinite combinations they create with one another.
Life was kind enough to let me experience not the pain, but the joy of being different.
We eventually gained the opportunity to institutionalize under one roof and establish our foundation.
We could now organize artistic activities to seek support from donors, and then implement social responsibility projects for the education and development of children from low-income families.
We were forming our own team. In humanity’s journey of civilization, we would also contribute with our own effort.
We dedicate our entire lives to this path.
15.05.2018
At Forty, I Asked:
Why Do I Exist, O Sky?
Answer: Child, Art, Goodness.
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