Yesterday was December 14th.

I really love croissants. Especially in the morning, in their simplest form. Without anything extra on top just dough, butter, and time.

But I realized something: every country reinterprets the croissant. Some change the dough, some the butter, some the baking method. Under the same name, completely different characters emerge.

And this isn’t just about pastry. It’s about interpretation.

As something spreads across the world, does it drift away from its essence, or does it become richer? That’s hard to decide.

But in France, on a small, old street, walking past a bakery where time didn’t seem to rush, I felt something very clearly:

This was different.

I understood it with the very first bite. There was no exaggeration. No performance. Yet the butter seeping between the layers kept reminding itself with every mouthful. ....................................

Yesterday was December 13. While getting a shave, I found myself thinking. The barber’s chair is a strange place. One of the rare spaces where a person knowingly becomes defenseless. I lean my head slightly back. My eyes are half-closed. I willingly place my throat under the blade held by another person. We don’t do this anywhere else. Our instincts wouldn’t allow it. But in the barber’s chair, that instinct is temporarily silenced. .................

Yesterday was December 12.

I’ve always liked special dates. Like 12.12… As if even the numbers lined up to ask me to pause and think.

Yesterday, I found myself thinking about relationships. I don’t know whether love was stronger in the past or whether we were simply looking at it differently, but I feel like something has been cut off cleanly, like a knife. As if the algorithm of love has changed. An invisible update arrived, and none of us fully noticed what was deleted.

Yesterday was December 11.

Yesterday, I spoke with a friend. Whenever I talk to them, there’s a quiet tension inside me. Not because of their tone of voice, but because their voice is being recorded.

They constantly record sound in whatever space they’re in. Not only phone calls the room, the table, everyday life… As if every place they inhabit is also an archive.

Something happened to them in the past. After that, sound stopped being just vibration. It became evidence.

The moment I remember this, the conversation changes. My words grow heavier. My sentences file themselves down without effort. For a moment, it feels like I’m not speaking to the person in front of me, but to some unknown ear that will listen later.

On one hand, I try to understand them. Trauma disrupts the way a person relates to time. The past leaks into the future. A person wants to protect themselves. And when memory no longer feels reliable, they begin to record.

But another question keeps circling inside me: If a space is being recorded, does the “present” still exist there? Or does everything turn into the past even as it’s being lived?

The hardest part is this: I want to ask them these questions. I really do. But I can’t.

Because asking “why” is sometimes not curiosity, but an uninvited entry. And for some people, “why” doesn’t unlock anything it tightens the lock.

So I stay quiet. I speak carefully, and I listen from a distance. Maybe this is how trust is built in the modern world now: One person records everything, while the other slowly withdraws.

Yesterday, I realized something: People used to fear being forgotten. Now they fear being recorded.

Yesterday was December 10th. A strange reluctance settled over me that day. Even picking up my pen felt heavy. I don’t usually force myself to write; but yesterday my mind kept searching for excuses not to write. Then I wondered: “What would happen if I didn’t write today?”

Yesterday was December 9th. I learned something strange that day. They told me that some of the “poisons” used to kill weeds are not poisons at all. They are hormones designed not to destroy the plant, but to force it to grow too fast. When I heard that sentence, my mind froze. So the way to kill a plant is not to weaken it, but to push it into growth it cannot handle. When a weed absorbs this hormone, it enters a state of uncontrolled expansion. It swells, strains, and eventually collapses because its structure cannot bear the speed. What kills the plant is not its inability to grow, but being made to grow too much. This idea unsettled me. The fact that what we call poison is used not to kill, but to “overgrow”… it felt strange, inverted, and strangely illuminating. For a moment, I turned inward: Aren’t there things that kill humans the same way? Aren’t we sometimes forced to grow faster than we can carry? Society’s expectations, the pressure to succeed, the demand to improve ourselves endlessly, the race to be better every single day… Sometimes a person collapses not from lack, but from excess. When a person's inner world is pushed to grow faster than it can sustain, don’t they share the same fate as that plant? That was when I realized: Not every kind of growth is life. Some forms of growth wear the disguise of a slow death. And perhaps what poisons human development is not the inability to grow, but the demand to grow too much. December 9 made me understand something: Not everything that looks strong is healthy. Some things die by growing. Some people too. When I got home in the evening, I opened my history notebook. On the page for December 9, it said: “December 9, 1979 – The World Health Organization declared smallpox officially eradicated.” When I read that sentence, I immediately thought back to what I had learned earlier that day about the weed killer that destroys by forcing growth. How excessive expansion, uncontrolled development, can bring a living thing to its end. Smallpox was an enemy of the same kind. It did not move slowly or spread evenly. It multiplied uncontrollably, from body to body, from city to city, filling the world at a speed the world could not bear. The deadliness of a virus often lies not in its strength but in how fast it spreads. Just like that growth hormone that kills a plant… too much expansion, too much growth, destroys both a weed and humanity. The eradication of smallpox may have been one of the quietest, yet greatest victories in human history. Because for the first time, humanity was not racing against its own speed, but against the speed of a virus and won. Behind that victory were thousands of scientists, doctors, workers, all focused on one essential question: A growth that cannot be stopped can only be defeated by stopping it. What was eradicated in 1979 was a disease, but also a principle: Not everything that grows is good. Some things must have their development halted so that life can continue. The eradication of smallpox made me realize this: Humans, too, sometimes battle their own acceleration. When a person cannot slow their growth, they collapse under the weight of what they are becoming. Sometimes a downfall is not born from lack, but from excess. And sometimes the greatest healing does not begin by growing more, but by learning to stop. At the end of December 9, I wrote in my notebook: “Some things are destroyed by growing. Others are saved by stopping the growth.”

Yesterday was December 8th.

I normally do not enjoy reading the news. It always feels too fresh, too loud, as if events are served to people before they have even finished cooking. A rushed flavor, and an environment that is far too open to manipulation. So I have always kept my distance from the news.

But yesterday I came across a headline that made me think not about the event itself but about the language of the news.

The Oxford Dictionary chose the word of the year for 2025. “Rage Bait.” In other words, baiting anger. Triggering people on social media, turning them against one another for no real reason, all for the sake of engagement.

I will admit, I paused when I saw it. Because the word itself perfectly captured the mood of the modern world.

Today, it is not information that holds value. It is provocation. Calm does not attract attention. Anger does. Balance does not get clicks. Imbalance does.

For a moment I wondered: Maybe the reason people struggle to understand one another is not because of who they are, but because of the inflamed content they are pushed to consume.

Social media feels like a massive public square. And in that square, the loudest voice is the one that gets heard. It is not the calm or the reasonable who are rewarded, but the ones who can generate the most anger.

The fact that this was chosen as the word of the year says a lot about us. Anger is no longer just an emotion. It is a strategy.

Yet when I read that headline yesterday, all I felt was this:

People do not come together through anger. They come together through the exhaustion of it.

And maybe from now on, the most valuable content will not be the kind that fuels rage, but the kind that creates calm.

December 8 made me realize something: In a world that constantly provokes you, choosing to remain calm is a form of rebellion.

When I got home in the evening, I opened my history notebook. On the page for December 8, there was a single line:

“December 8, 1980 – John Lennon was killed.”

I paused for a moment. Because Lennon was not just a musician. He was the sound of peace, of calm, of imagining something softer. He was someone who reminded the world, again and again, that a gentler tone was still possible.

But that gentle voice was silenced in a single moment of anger.

And when I remembered the “Rage Bait” headline I had read yesterday, I realized how painfully ironic this date was. The word of 2025 was chosen as “rage bait,” and this day in 1980 was a day when anger pulled a human being out of history.

It was one of the moments that revealed how easily anger can be triggered and how quickly it can be sold as a kind of power.

In old footage describing Lennon’s death, one thing always stands out to me. In the screams of the people, there is not only grief. There is fear. Because that night people understood something:

A person is not killed only because they are hated. A person is also killed because hate is directed.

Suddenly the word “rage bait” made perfect sense.

If someone like Lennon, a man who told others to imagine a better world, could not escape the shadow of anger, it is no surprise that ordinary people today are so easily manipulated online.

December 8 made me realize this:

The world has been producing “rage bait” for years. We consume it without noticing. But the real strength is not choosing anger but choosing calm.

And I wrote this in the corner of my notebook:

“A person consumed by rage cannot change the world. But one who can stay calm transforms themselves first and then the people around them.”

Yesterday was December 7th

Like every Sunday, I began the day with the same ritual: a quiet cup of coffee in a corner. It is not the taste I love the most. It is the short pause it creates, a small opening in my mind, a moment where I step out of life’s noise and return to myself.

After finishing my coffee, I walked toward the restroom and noticed a long row of tables in the distance. Dozens of people were sitting across from one another, each holding cards with a strangely serious look on their faces.

At first, I thought it was tarot. The colors of the cards, the way the tables were arranged, the way people stared at each other made it look like someone was reading a fortune while someone else waited quietly for their future. I even wondered if it was some sort of group tarot event. They were playing with such focus and precision that nothing else felt possible.

But then I saw curious children leaning over the tables, and I realized something did not fit. Children do not gather around fortune telling. They gather around games.

I stepped closer.

And then I saw it. They were playing Pokémon cards.

Most of them were adults. Not kids. People who had carried the weight of many years, yet with a few pieces of cardboard they were opening the door to a completely different world.

As I watched them, I began to notice something beautiful. The excitement of placing a card on the table, the small calculations running in their minds while they waited for the opponent’s move, the creatures they imagined so vividly felt like a bridge between childhood and real life.

And at that moment I asked myself: When was the last time I played a game?

How long had life pressed down on me like an endless list of tasks? How long had it been since I allowed myself to feel the lightness of play?

Those adults reminded me of something important. Age, seriousness, work and responsibility do not erase the human need for play. If anything, the heavier real life becomes, the more the mind seeks a quiet refuge of imagination.

Maybe play does not belong only to childhood. Maybe it belongs to survival.

The imaginary creatures on those cards were fully alive in their minds, and seeing that made me smile. Even as someone who was only watching, I felt a little lighter.

And I thought to myself:

Sometimes we need play in order to carry the weight of reality. Play is not an escape. It is the way the soul repairs itself.

When I got home in the evening, I opened my history notebook. On the page, one line stood out: