NEW SEASON

  

 

Aslı was lying in bed, idly scrolling through her phone, when a message ping jolted her.

“Venni just dropped their new season pieces, everything’s fire! And what’s left from last year is on Black Friday sale. Hurry, or you’ll miss out!”

She had already grown tired of flipping between pages when her friend’s text came to the rescue. Holding her breath, she tapped the link. Maybe just maybe she could finally snag that coat she’d been eyeing since last winter, and at a good price this time.

Before she found it, she ended up browsing plenty of things she didn’t even need. She hearted a few, just in case. Halfway down the page, there it was: her winter coat, in her size. She added it to her cart and exhaled, relieved, as if she’d accomplished something important.

Now came the mission to hit the free-shipping minimum. Accessories, she thought. Those couldn’t be too pricey. Then a navy-blue bag caught her eye; clean lines, minimal design.

“It’ll look perfect with my coat.” She thought, snapping a screenshot and sending it to Zeynep.

“I literally can’t be a happy girl without this one.”

She checked the coupon section. Nothing. Maybe she’d find something similar on another site. She told herself she’d just look around. An hour slipped by before she noticed.

“No, if I’m getting one, it has to be this. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.” she murmured.

Just then, her mother’s voice came from the kitchen.

“Aslı, sweetheart! Come peel the tomatoes.”

Even though she didn’t need it, Aslı quickly threw a fake chain necklace into her cart, just enough to get free shipping and hit order.

Her mom, like every year, was deep in her tomato-preserving marathon.

“She always drags me into this.” Aslı grumbled inwardly.

“Mom, why don’t you just buy them ready-made? They say it’s cheaper anyway if you use coupons. That’s what Sude’s mom does.”

Her mother didn’t reply. She just pointed at Aslı’s hands and hair; the silent code for “Tie up your hair and wash your hands.” Aslı sighed, obeyed, and let her mother slip an apron carefully over her neck.

She was bored before they even began. She just wanted to finish quickly and get back to that denim she’d seen online. If she bought it, her winter wardrobe would finally be complete or so she told herself every single time. Yet somehow, every “last item” always led to another order. It was a loop she couldn’t escape. The more she bought, the more she wanted. “Oh well.” she thought. “At least it’s fun.”

Her mother, too, was getting ready for the “new season” only her season was real. Every fall, she ran her own kind of campaign; starting with deep cleaning, then packing away the summer clothes. The kitchen, though, was a world of its own. “You don’t buy summer vegetables in winter.” she always said, and somehow managed to preserve everything: canning, drying, freezing. Autumn, as her mother called it, was “ant season.”

As much as Aslı complained, she secretly liked this ritual. Watching her mother rush around always brought back a childhood memory: The Ant and the Grasshopper. Her mom was the Ant, always preparing, always saving. As a little girl, she’d imagined herself as that ant and felt angry at the Grasshopper for being so careless.

Now, for a moment, she felt the same again.

“Why is it like this?” she wondered.

People know things but they don’t really understand until it happens to them. Or maybe they do understand, but it hurts too much, so they say, “They must’ve deserved it.”

Can anyone truly grasp hunger without ever being hungry? Or losing a home without having one taken away?

Her thoughts drifted to the world outside, to people trapped under collapsed buildings after earthquakes, to homes blown apart by bombs, to infants left alone after watching their parents die.

“What kind of world is this?” she thought. “What kind of people are we, that we can just look away?”

A world of giant Grasshoppers, where if we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

When she was a kid, she used to collect seashells and pebbles to paint in winter, her own way of being “prepared.” But how could anyone ever prepare for losing everything they trusted?

The thought weighed on her. She shook her head; she always did that when she wanted to shake something off. Her mother’s voice saved her.

“Come on, sweetheart, we still need to cook the beans for the freezer.”

And just like that, she was back in her small, safe world pretending the other one didn’t exist, thinking again about new season designs.

 

"ExperientialDesign Teaching" has taken the pursuit of one’s true purpose as its own.

It leads the mind toward clarity, helping people make conscious, meaningful choices. It provides strategies that lead to genuine, lasting solutions.

Starting with "Who’s Who?" and continuing with "Mastery in Relationships", "The Psychology of Success", and "Mastery in Avoidance", its programs help people become happier and more successful than they were yesterday.