We Rot Fastest While Defending Ourselves

Rastinews — Sometimes a person tires most while deceiving himself. Trying to sell others those false thoughts that twist in his gut like cramps... With every sentence he empties out a little more; the louder his voice grows, the harder he tries to convince, the deeper the echo inside him digs. Because the human heart grows heavy carrying an idea it does not believe.

This is a decay. A silent, slow decay. One of those who captured it best is Emil Cioran, author of A Short History of Decay:

"Those who speak have no secrets. And we all speak — we betray ourselves, we expose our hearts; each of us is the executioner of the unspoken; each of us struggles to destroy secrets, starting with our own."

This is exactly the weight of ideological ideas. A man is not buried by carrying them — he is buried by defending them.

Like a body buried under an avalanche…
At first there is only silence. Then the weight collapses. Cold seeps into the bones, the chest tightens, breath fails. As time passes, every cell feels the full weight of that burden.

And past a certain point, the pain becomes unbearable.

The more he struggles, the deeper he sinks…. Slavery to a thought or an idea is the same — like a body buried under an avalanche... There is no applause there, no crowd; only that heavy ache rising from within the heart…

Standing before the mirror, you study your own face the way you would a stranger's description — a face drained of meaning, trapped in the endless ticking of some calculator inside you... Adding your own thin voice to that vast noise outside, you actually vanish silently into the crowd.

The contradictions grow; every word out of a person's mouth, without his noticing, subtracts a little more from himself. But once the truth is seen, it does not leave the mind so easily.

Only moments ago you drank your coffee at that table, set your rakı beside the familiar mezze. The same chairs, the same laughter, the same sentences… Too late, you realize that table shares more than drink or coffee. Ideas are shared there too. More often than not, borrowed without anyone noticing.

One person finishes the sentence another left hanging, one man's anger spreads to the next, one man's opinion slowly becomes everyone's opinion. In this way, friendship pools not only memories but thoughts as well. Sometimes a person gets up from that table without even noticing that he carries away not his own opinion,
but the table's.

This is how routine takes hold.
The same coffee, the same rakı, the same words…
And in time, a person starts to resemble the thinking of that circle;
because we borrow the language and the mind of those we spend the most time with.

But truth is stubborn. It lingers like an ache. It waits, deep down, like a toothache. Because the truth inside a person is nothing like the voice of the crowd.
It is louder.

And one day, walking home from that crowded table, a small crack forms inside: "Is any of this really my own thinking, or am I just carrying that table's?"

That is the moment the old, rusted belief cracks for the first time.
And a person begins to hear the difference between his own voice and the voice of the crowd.

Until it hurts, a person cannot shake off that deep sleep and find the courage to ask, "What am I doing?" Inside everyone there is an ember that never quite goes out, one that resists the endless habits, resists the surrender of "that's just how it's always been." No blow you take can put it out, and no false success can claim it. It waits only for one moment — the moment the false shell cracks and the old certainties break down.

Once that door opens even a crack, you understand: resistance is not a strength someone else hands you. It is your own willingness to face the great fight.

Your own voice, for the first time, breaks free of the mob's noise and stands upright. Only then does an idea stop being a sentence borrowed from someone else's mouth; it becomes your flesh, your bone.

In that moment, a person agrees to shoulder the heavy weight his own truth will bring. This time, you are the road — and the traveler…