Living Life from the Inside, Not from Behind a Screen

I have always loved visiting new places and meeting new people. But for a year or two there had been something inside me that bothered me. A feeling like a knot in my throat, a weight in my stomach… I couldn't work out where it came from. What was it that was wearing me down so much and stopping me from enjoying the places I visited and the experiences I had as much as I used to?

I used to travel around Turkey's beautiful cities, wander their historic streets for hours, and try to etch every detail I saw into my memory. Every place I went told me a new story. But over time, I noticed this was changing. I couldn't feel the same excitement, and even the most beautiful views were starting to seem ordinary to me.

I will never forget the day I understood why. I was walking through the beautiful streets of Istanbul with three friends. At one point I looked around and realised that every one of us had a phone in our hands. We were constantly taking photos, correcting each other's poses, trying to find the best angle. At first glance, this seemed perfectly normal. After all, we wanted to immortalise beautiful memories. But without noticing, we had become focused on sharing our memories rather than living them. The same questions kept running through my mind: "Did this photo come out nice enough?", "Does my nose look big?", "Is the light good?", "How many people would like this if I posted it?" Instead of noticing the city I was in, its historic texture, the people around me, I was focused on the phone screen. Instead of seeing the beauty right in front of my eyes, I was watching it from behind a camera.

Just then, an elderly woman caught my attention. She was lying on the grass, stroking it with her hands, looking around peacefully and simply enjoying the moment she was in. She had no phone in her hand and no need to prove anything… She was simply there. She was feeling life. In that moment, something changed inside me. I realised that my problem wasn't that I had grown bored of travelling. My problem was that I was trying to turn the moments I lived into content to be shared on social media. Instead of truly experiencing the places I visited, I was thinking about how to show them. And that was stopping me from appreciating the value of every moment I lived.

After that day, I made myself a small promise. Of course, I still take photos, but now I try to live the moment first. I prefer to put my phone in my pocket and watch my surroundings, listen to people's voices, feel the wind, and record that moment in my mind.

Because now I know that the most beautiful memories are not the photos that get the most likes, but the moments we live with real feeling. Photos and likes are only images. What truly matters is what that moment makes us feel.