This quote from Jim Carrey pleases me every time I come across it: “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it’s not the answer.” However, when I read this quote the last time, it touched something else inside me. It meant much more than materialistic demands, such as having money, a nice house, a good car, vacations, and so on.
The human being is a continuously wanting creature. It keeps wanting even when it has attained everything it previously wanted. This is the main reason why people start to see deficiencies in the new cars that they longed for not so long ago. Not long after buying cars, people start to look at other cars and, more importantly, start to dream of owning another car. You can swap the word car above with house, money, job, travel, clothes, property, and even lover. Everything suits something; each thing is suitable for someone and has a valid situation. As Jim Carrey said, you eventually understand that it’s not the answer you searched for, but you find an individual answer instead. Sometimes you cannot find this answer, so you keep trying to fulfil different demands. The car is okay, so now the house needs improving, and I need to marry. Actually, I need a child as well, right after I change my job and return from that dream holiday…The list goes on and on. Because you need a question before you can find an answer, you cannot understand the answers you find. You spend all your life swaying from side to side. The worst part is to live this swaying inside without even recognizing it. Once you ask the question, the answers come, or at least you start to see them. Each question is individual, but they all have a common topic.
My question was, “What is my role in this life?” How can I play my role successfully without knowing Ozge’s character? What does she want? What does she expect from this life? What is her character? What does she like and dislike? What are her dreams, and more importantly, do these dreams really belong to her? I asked these questions for a long time afterwards…
At first, I often lived by swaying from side to side, and sometimes I went off half-cocked. One time, I had just completed another period of this swaying when I came across Jim Carrey’s quote once again. It was a time when I had recently understood that what I dreamed of, and longed for, was not what I wanted after all. To read some writing, a quote, or a book is one thing. To understand them is something else, but to perceive is something else beyond all of these. Someone understands and applies a meaning inside only in combination with a real-life experience. I had achieved what I wanted, and it all went well in the beginning. I was happy, and I did not miss anything. I really did feel happy. I can feel it even now when I look back at those memories.
So, what happened next? It was like writing answers on a blank examination paper. I was happily writing down my answers, but there was a small problem: There were no questions on the paper. In this exam, you have to write down your own questions first and then answer them. I had written down all of my answers and got to the end of the paper. The “What happened next?” part came right after: I found the questions, and my answers were irrelevant to them. In these circumstances, I would fail the exam, so I started anew with a fresh paper. This time I wrote the questions at the top of the page before starting to answer. This paper, however, still carried traces of the previous one, and this was fortunate, because they were showing me the way, the way that I would not follow. Now I share the same wish with Jim Carrey. I wish that you will all satisfy all of your desires. Maybe yours are the right answers to your questions—I surely cannot know—but if not, I hope you come to understand what you really want and what you really need.
Achieving the thing I believed to be my dream made me understand that it was not what I really wanted. Furthermore, it showed me how to understand what I really did want. Now, I prefer to walk this path, and I gather everything under a single dream and a single will: Ozge, who knows well the character she plays and plays it the best she can. The rest is history.
With all my love to the leading character of the story…
