I live in a
town that runs on two things: property and proper tea. And somehow these two
things seem inseparable from each other. No house or land is being sold in
Alanya without a glass of çay to seal the deal with. And when sipping a little
glass of hot dark red tea with someone, it’s often business that comes up. So
property and tea may have more in common than it seems at first.
They both
require a certain kind of investment from you. You will need a fair amount of
money to invest in property. Sharing a simple glass of çay with someone on the
other hand is for free, it only asks for an investment of your personal time.
As a foreigner moving to Alanya your focus clearly lies on property investment.
On finding the perfect house and realizing your dream of living abroad. It’s a
great investment for the future. That way buying a house may seem far more
important than spending free time drinking tea with people. But this is not
entirely true. Although the benefits may seem worlds apart at first sight, they
are actually more related than you’d think.
We all want
to invest in something. Whether we want to increase our financial capital,
educate ourselves, build a status or network or gain more life quality.
However, some of our best investments are the investments we make in the people
around us. Buying a house alone will not guarantee us a better life. It’s the
people we meet in our daily life and the new friendships we make that will
bring us the benefits of a happy lifestyle. Feeling connected to others reduces
stress, keeps us from feeling lonely, brings us daily little joys and is good
for the heart.
Of course,
back home we had all that. The long term friendships, family and work relationships.
And we still have them, but on a distance now. So it’s important to build a new
social life where we are now. Because it is as much the walls that surround us as
it is the people who walk through our front door that make us feel at home.
After you
bought the house, got the nice view, the great balcony and maybe even the pool,
you did the ‘smart part’ of your investment. Now it’s time to focus on the
‘heart part’ as well. It’s time to go out and.. you guessed it, drink tea with people.
With shopkeepers, restaurant owners, neighbors, other expats or ‘Ali from
around the corner’. This is such a fun, simple and effective way to bond and to
learn more about your new environment. In no time you will know your
neighborhood and build a network of your own. And the good news is, you won’t
even have to put so much effort into it yourself. Lucky that you moved to
Turkey and not to some other country. Because you will get invited for some çay
everywhere you go, so all you have to do is to accept. And the new friendships
you’ll make will add more color to your new life.
So try to
see both things as an investment and remember where your payoff comes from.
With buying property it is obviously your increasing capital that you profit
from. With drinking tea, your profit lies in the joy of that moment and in building friendships.
Both are equally important, both improve life quality, both make you feel at
home in a new place and.. in this wonderful country, both go hand in hand.
The Sufi
mystic and poet Rumi, who lived in Konya in the 13th century, said
it so beautifully.
Gel tanış olalım, yavaş yavaş bu çayı içer gibi.
Gel şu günün hay huyunu bir kenara koyalım, birbirimizi tanıyalım.
Gel bir bardak çay paylaşalım. Belki ısınırız onunla ve arkadaşlığımızla.
Gel hayatı ısıtalım.
***
Come, let us get to know each other a bit in the time it takes for us to
sip this tea together.
Come, let's take the time from the busy business of our days and slow down
a bit.
Come, let us share a glass of tea and perhaps we will be both warm not only
by it but by a new friendship made.
Come, let us make life warm for ourselves.
Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi
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