Translator: Burcu Küçük Reviewer: Asmin Ece Şimşek
Hello evryone.
I am Hamza. I am a content creator on social media.
I am also known as a YouTuber.
Now, I think the big step that is our topic today
is something that varies from person to person.
Big step in academic life,
big step in love life,
like a big step in family life you can take great strides in many areas.
The big step I want to tell you about today,
I threw myself more than once in my own life
and I will give a few examples of them.
About the steps taken from the comfort to discomfort, to the unknown.
Again, my name is Hamza.
I am a content creator on social media
and there I am known as Hamza the Japanese.
Generally, people’s reaction to this is “How do you look like a Japanese?”
For example, arms and legs are hairy. If you look at the belly, mashallah
If I cut the beard morning comes out in the evening.
They say, “There is no possibility that you are Japanese.
Is your mother Japanese or your father Japanese?”
I say, “My mother is from Konya and my father is from Niğde.”
They say, “What does that have to do with anything?”
They get very confused and pretend they understand.
Actually, I’m Japanese by birth.
I was born in Tokyo, Japan.
For fifteen years, I grew up in Japan.
While we greeting in there, we bow down like this,
saying “konnichiwa,” “sayounara”.
We eat with chopsticks, but not always.
Our rices are eaten without oil and salt.
We eat cooked fish in the morning and raw fish in the evening.
After spending fifteen years in such an environment,
I had to move to Turkey
for family reasons and to Konya in Turkey.
So 15 years in Tokyo,
I moved from Tokyo to Konya in my 15th year
And that was one of the first big steps in my life.
So to a place I totally don’t know --
We were coming in the summers, but I didn’t have much memory.
Fifteen years later, I took my first step.
Now, although half of them are my friends from Konya that I love very much,
When I say this, people’s reaction is “Oh dude, get well soon”
or like “Bro what are you doing in Turkey, go back to Tokyo,” they say.
but especially at that time I could not understand it at all.
Because Konya was a city that
welcomes my more precisely me, with its thousands of innovations.
Hand in hand for the first time -- Of course, we were doing it occasionally
in Japan, too. but for the first time in Konya, I saw two such friends
greet each other with knocking their heads and make a sound with their hands.
This was a completely new thing for me.
I saw it for the first time in Turkey that greeting with kissing someone
right-left-right like “muah muah”.
We have bowing types including 30-60-90 degrees rather than
greeting types.
Or for example I saw that the more butter you put in a rice
the tastier it gets etc.
I saw that in Konya,
And I don’t even have to say that I didn’t get to taste how delicious
the meat bread was in Japan before.
I learned it when I came to Konya.
So it helped me to break this typical perception that people placed in my head
and helped me to take this step.
So when I was in Japan,
I have never heard of anything about Konya.
But when I came I saw it hosting me with its beauties
and now I can clearly say that
it’s one of my favorite 3 cities in the world.
By the way I forgot to mention but my content on Youtube is about travel.
So I’ve been to many countries so far and
yet Konya is at the top 3 for now.
Apart from that my second biggest step was
going to India for me.
One day I was sick of the comfort and monotone life
and it started to bother me slowly.
I wanted to go out of that zone.
I wanted to take a step out of that comfort into an unknown
and some of the steps I took for it were:
I worked as a translator, I’ve been a translator for the first time in my life
and with the money that comes from that big step, of course my grades were good,
I told my dad “Dad look, I got a 100.
So I want some things from you.”
After that I worked as waiter; another first in my life.
So after taking first steps in different fields and with the money coming with them
I bought my ticket to India and afterwards I went to India.
By the way a footnote: when you Google India,
there is Tac Mahal, luxurious architecture.
Then there’s unique landscapes.
But when I arrived the chaos welcomed me.
It was a complete chaos itself, I took a step out of the airport,
maybe you know or you don’t,
when you go to India one day
there’s an air pollution equals to 20 packs of cigarette.
I dived into this while waiting for such landscapes.
The drifting taxi drivers on the right.
One says “he should get on my car”, one says “he should get on my car”.
Punching each other etc. They started fighting in front of me.
I was in such a chaotic place.
I said “What did I do?”
Why? Why did I need to get out of my comfort zone?
Why did I need to take a step into such discomfort?
“Dang Hamza” i said.
Then I took the step and
in an environment where I would go crazy if it were in Turkey
I have spent one day, two days, three days and a week like that.
I was sleeping with the mice.
I was poisoned for the second time, feeling nauseous.
While having such weird days
one night while walking through a street
there was a street artist.
He was playing a guitar.
And us a twenty or thirty people, were watching him.
Then a girl came,
swinging her legs around, started to dance
and she was smiling there.
When she smiled I looked around and realized
this girl was making everyone smile, a little indian girl.
She was around four or five at the most.
Then, she danced, got tired, moved to the sidewalk,
she sat down, took a newspaper from the ground
tore the paper, wrapped it and took it to her mouth
and she chewed it with her teeth, then tore again.
Then she chewed, chewed and chewed.
She swallowed that newspaper.
Then the second half.
Then tore another one, took it to her mouth, swallowed.
Three, four and then that indian kid finished a whole newspaper.
And that’s the Indian girl who changed my life
and added a meaning to my step.
Another turning point of my life as well.
After seeing this I went to a market.
I decided to buy a little ice cream as big
as my little finger and give it to her.
I gave it and she was so happy and surprised.
She took the ice cream to her mouth. She spitted it once she ate it.
Why? Because her teeth are rotten.
And when I got closer, I saw that she was itching so bad.
Her hair was infested with lice.
A little girl, who I presume to be an orphan,
took that sandy ice cream from the ground after spitting
and started eating happily.
When I was in India I realized this:
Well, I was raised in Tokyo,
I spent time in Konya, Istanbul etc.
I wouldn’t have realized how lucky I was, if I didn’t take that step,
if I didn’t go into the unknown,
I would never know that such lives exist.
That day when I saw that girl I realized,
and learned how lucky I was in my own life.
There could be a thousand examples like her.
For instance I’ve been to Africa.
In Africa, not all of them are negative actually.
I was expecting drought for example.
I was expecting hungry and thirsty people.
I saw that it was a Maldive-like wonder of nature country.
Another perception was being broken.
Then I went to Korea.
While I was expecting Korea to be a far-east country like Japan,
people started to talk to me in Turkish directly by saying “Merhaba”.
They were greeting me etc.
My prejudice about Korea- while thinking
they would be more like the Japanese- they were more like the Turkish.
Another prejudice of mine was broken.
Then I went to Europe.
Another prejudice was broken.
I went to Egypt.
While I was expecting the pyramids, I got arrested seven times
for silly reasons.
There’s much to tell but
again there, my prejudice was broken in another context.
Either good or bad,
everytime I found the courage to take my step
switch to the discomfort, I realized:
I was facing the reality of life either good or bad,
and when I do, it never returned to me in a bad way.
I mean at least I was seeing reality, learning ve acknowledging.
What I’m trying to say is,
I belaboured,
shortly don’t be afraid to get out of comfort.
Don’t be afraid to step into the discomfort.
Even I will maybe go somewhere some weekend.
I’m afraid, I didn’t even buy the ticket.
It’s been 2-3 years and I’m still afraid.
But believe me if I took that step-
get arrested for 7 times, get poisoned,
just 2 weeks ago in Nepal, on the mountain walking on the Everest route
and I got poisoned so badly,
I had to go back to the city by plane.
I even had to come back to Turkey to get treated immediately.
But even this brought me so much experience that
I said it was worth it.
There was never a time I took
that step and regretted doing it
This can happen at any area of your life.
For example, you might be born into a luxurious villa.
Your maid might brought your coffee.
Go and buy a coffee from Starbucks.
This is not necessarily a huge thing but even this,
going out of your comfort zone
or not necessarily another country but
go to another city, to another neighbourhood,
meet another people.
Do something you haven’t done before.
Because believe me there’s a door you have never even imagined is waiting for you.
Go to that door, open it and see what’s waiting for you.
As a traveler I can only say this:
Life really worths exploring.
Only thing you have to do is to take the step.
I wish you to explore this life with its good and bad.
Thank you, I appreciate it.