They asked Confucius;
What is the first thing you would do if you became the head of a country?
Confucius replied: The first thing I would do is to correct the language and literature of that country.

I don’t know if words are really that important, but sometimes when you change the form of words, new meanings can emerge. The other day, while starting a sentence with “the world as I perceive it,” a lightning bolt struck.

From my world, to the world as I perceive it.

The world as I perceive it: evoked a meaning of containing uncertainties, unique to me, not possible to cover everything and therefore not knowing everything, on the side of some, against others (therefore divisive), sometimes happy, sometimes sorrowful, and thousands of diverse self characteristics. Although there was no one else in the world as I perceive it, which is special only to me, there was the influence of many other people. My teachers, my family, my friends, all somehow shaped the world as I perceive it. But in the world as I perceive it, there was only me. In the absolute sense, it only affected me.

My world, on the other hand, aroused a more possessive feeling in me (although it actually does not belong to me). Because the first things that came to my mind were my family, my job, my friends, the world, society, Turkey, Istanbul, etc., which are the elements that shape the world as I perceive it.

Up to this point, I’m sure most people have thought the same thing. But the main issue and the point I want to get to is that my world has been made more important than the world as I perceive it. In places where the worlds of two people collide, (money, oil, land, fame, glory, etc.) fight, war, and all kinds of baseness are a dime a dozen.

If we could understand that the world we perceive (the world living inside us), which is a requirement of our humanity, is at least as unique and important as the worlds of other people, and if we could show the necessary respect to others; would our common world we live in be the same?

Final question: Is the fact that we were not raised this way an excuse?