Nesligül

To be perfectly honest, I thought the world was in a state of serious decline. I haven’t always felt that way, but that’s the way things looked to me recently and I didn’t see any reason to doubt it. Today, I’m not so sure. My renewed optimism came out of a lunch-time conversation at a little middle-eastern restaurant, and I almost didn’t go inside.

I don’t even know the name of the restaurant, but I go there from time to time for falafel. Today was almost warm enough to eat at a table on the sidewalk and I considered it because a crowd of guests already occupied almost all of the seats at their tiny dining counter and the room had gotten very hot. But I decided I’d get cold before I finished my lunch, so I squeezed into the last seat at the end of the counter, right beside the hot soup pot.

Fortunately, the guy beside me left soon, and I could move away from the soup. There, I found myself beside a hungry music student eating from two platters. We chatted, and I learned that she’s a pianist studying composition. This interested me, particularly the part about learning to compose. She taught me a little bit about how Bach and Mozart’s audiences might have interacted with the music, and how it differs from modern traditions. The conversation made me remember, once again, that I should never assume that my way of doing something is the best way or that somebody else’s approach is necessarily worse.

Finally, the conversation looped around to her native city, Istanbul. I told her how much I like Turkey and asked about whether the recent civil unrest had changed things for her family. Her optimistic reply didn’t surprise me so much as her thinking impressed me. She pointed out how when a person has a headache, the pain is foremost in the person’s thought even though the rest of the body may be entirely healthy. Similarly, we lose track of all the good things going on in the world when we focus on trouble spots. She sees lots of reason for optimism and directed my attention that way.

I like it. I could have recommended optimism to somebody else at another time, but I wasn’t feeling it this week and I’m grateful for today’s redirection.