What does life mean to you?
I guess at some point everyone stays still at least for a few seconds to think about this question. While you are thinking about your answer, I want to share my answer with you.
For me life is like a road. While you are on a road you can never predict what you will face within a few steps. Of course you choose a path but the road may bring you many suprises like in our lives. We make up our minds and make decisions but we can’t estimate the consequences of our decisions. My motto is “Accept what the road, in other words life, offers to you and enjoy every step of the road.”
That’s why I like this Turkish poem very much “Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım” which means “I am on a long and narrow road.” It is written by famous Turkish folk writer and poet Aşık Veysel- Veysel Şatıroğlu. I also have a website with the same name of the poem. You can read my posts about my travels and experiences there too, it is regularly updated both in Turkish and English.
Who is Aşık Veysel?
Veysel Satıroglu is one of the most popular and important Turkish minstrel, poet, songwriter and bağlama players who is a gift for Turkish people. His parents had lost their two daughters because of smallpox before Veysel was born. At age of 7, Aşık (minstrel) Veysel became blind in his left eye first and then right eye because of smallpox. He started to his musical life with a bağlama which was given by his father as a gift. After 1st World War he married his first wife, Esma. From this marriage he had one son and one daughter. His son died 10 days after his birth. After a while later his son’s death, first his father passed away and 18 months after his mother passed away too. It was followed by his wife Esma’s run away with a servant from his brother’s house and she abandoned him with their 6 months old daughter. Despite all the difficulties, despairs, grief he transposed joy of life through his songs and poems in a simple way.
I want to share his most famous poem with you.
I’m On A Long Narrow Road
I’m on a long and narrow road,
I walk all day, I walk all night,
I cannot tell what is my plight,
I walk all day, I walk all night.
Soon as I came into the World,
That moment I began my fight,
Through an inn with two doors,
I walk all day, I walk all night.
I walk in sleep – I find no cause,
To linger, whether dark or light,
I see the travelers on the road,
I walk all day, I walk all night.
Forty-nine years upon these roads,
On desert plain, on mountain height,
In foreign lands I make my way,
I walk all day, I walk all night.
Sometimes it seems an endless road,
The goal is very far from sight,
One minute, and the journey’s o’er-
I walk all day, I walk all night.
Veysel does wonder at this state,
Lament or laughter, which is right?
Still to attain that distant goal,
I walk all day, I walk all night.
This poem is also composed by him. This is a modern English version of the song.
This is the original song by Aşık Vessel’s own voice