Dream Like a Poet, Fight Like a Tiger: It's Not How You Start; It's How You Finish

Afterword

Preface

When I picked up this book, I didn’t realize how much of a journey it would be. Since I know Selim Yeniceri personally, it was painful to read different struggles and injustices, especially the problems created by others. The unexpectedness of dreaming one’s dreams… well, it captivated me to forage through the words and stories, page by page.

Here’s what I found: much of this book refers back to the great title, encouraging us not only to live our dreams, but to fight for them. Don’t just fight for them today or tomorrow, but fight for them again and again. The value of dreams is that they get us through struggles and create who we are, with a purpose.

In-depth talking to Selim about problems and a seeming lifestyle of problems revealed his further insight: problems are positive, as without them, we could never be who we are. After all, they formulate us to have sharper vision and open doors that would have remained closed.

Several recipes of life are offered:

Dream your dreams

Don’t conform to what other people think you should do or say

Don’tbe who others want you to be

Forge your own way

Stand up for what you feel is right, even if you’re alone

Make definite plans to fulfill your dreams

Don’t be satisfied with just being average,

Project your life 20 years from now

Do what you love to do as a career,

Know your unique gifts and talents

…and realize that your talents come from God.

Selim uses the analogies of life and life’s lessons in the context of the tiger and the poet. Also integrating the philosophy of Far Eastern Martial Arts, he shows us how patience and fortitude become a way of life.

The reader is repeatedly taken to heights and pinnacles of success. The gratification that one feels is intuitively spontaneous, almost as if the reader has somehow personally pushed Selim on, sharing in his success. The storyline is completely unpredictable and one gets the strict sense that the story continues even today, like a road through mountain after mountain.

The reader thinks aloud, What’s going to happen next? Is he going to pick up his guitar AGAIN?

A novel method employed here is that Selim gives the reader a cue when something important is going to be said. Life lessons learned are attributed in two crystallized, signature forms: Dream Tiger Memories and Dream Tiger Tips. They add charm, making room for yet another ready, quick read-through book’s end, to capture the most cherished memories and self-help hints.

I’ve read other memoirs and have written a series of my own. Even still, I’m impressed by the laying out of captivating, historic stories in time, used with precision-cut images that seem to have been taken just for this book! Each image is so compelling that it made me wonder, Which came first, the image or the story? Each image aligns itself with layers of its own story, allowing the artist within the writer to be clearly seen.

Imagination is revealed over and over again in Selim the writer, the artist, and the musician. One can almost hear the guitar playing on a fogged-up stage with the crowd going wild! The emotion of anticipation is pivotal, conjured in an almost playful manner.

Intricate stories of unusual relationships within the following are told: rock bands, the homeless, a cat family, girlfriends, lurking nay-sayers, and a troubled teen. Twists of simple bad luck pop up here and there, of course, so it’s good to see good luck winking at Selim just enough to keep his dreams alive.

One is caught up in the personal story and wants him to succeed! We learn to love the good people in the world who gave of themselves, without expecting anything in return.

When the reader nears the end of the book, one can’t help but wonder, What more can be said? Then upon further reading, one gains epiphany after epiphany in a lasting style. Like a tiger in all his magnificence, this book just keeps one captivated with each new view. To the end, intricacies abound.

No doubt that at some point, the reader will conclude: Selim is gifted with the Super-power of telling great stories. Additionally, the basket of stories, memories, music, quotes, and life lessons remixes flavorfully.

My favorite part is his original story of the chicken; I had to read it twice. It serves effervescent flavor to our children and youth, as do the stories carried within the tales of Rohan the son. Just a pinch of childish imagination is needed, after all, to formulate our dreams. Selim reminds us of many dreamers who attained their potential despite numerous obstacles of products, people, and vision.

So many people have advice to give. Others just listen while pails of troubles are dropped from mouths, tears, and souls carrying weights that are far too heavy for any one person to carry. This book holds encouragement, testimony, and hope for our children, youth, students, single parents, and anyone aspiring to attain their dreams. It also is great literature reading, with a mix of genre within the genres of memoir and self-help.

Exactly like the title says, "Dream like a poet; fight like a tiger: Dream Tiger."

Selim constantly shows us proof that others have gone before us, and they made their dreams come true.

So can we!

So go ahead and pick up that guitar one more time!

Dr. Margaret Aranda

A LIFE

THROUGH THE EDGES

Introduction

Before everything else, let me tell you something about life. If you follow conformity, your life will be designed by society. Whether you like it or not, that’s just the way it is. When it comes to the question of how you will live your life, you have two options: either you follow the rules and live the life that was designed for you by society from the day you were born, or you set your own rules and shape your life exactly the way you want it to be.

I made my choice when I was 18. I still remember that day very clearly when I sat in the cafeteria of Mimar Sinan University Academy of Fine Arts. I questioned myself about this choice while watching my peers bustling around me.

With just a college-age life experience, I examined two options in as much detail as possible.

If I followed conformity, it was clear what was waiting for me: I would finish my university education, perhaps complete my Master’s degree, join the army to complete my military duty, have a job when a veteran, start building my life, marry some nice girl, have kids, pay bills, try to purchase an apartment, buy a car, perhaps start my own business if I’m successful enough, then buy a summerhouse if I can, prepare for future retirement, etc., and just when I’m ready to enjoy the life I finally built, I’d start running from one hospital to another to take care of my health problems due to old age. That’s all. (Seriously?!) Probably I would be liked by lots of people because I wasn’t overemphasized, and my parents would be proud of me because I would have a so-called good life. I would have lots of friends and lots of people to take advantage of me by using me to forge their own career positions above me. And freedom? Forget about it! In such a scenario, it doesn’t matter if you’re an employee or an employer; you’re a prisoner to the rat race of responsibilities and other people’s expectations from you! 

In the second option, expectations were almost a complete unknown. But there were some points that I just knew. First of all, in such a lifestyle, nothing could be ordinary or middle line. In the end, either you would find yourself in the bottom of garbage, in sewers, under the bridges with all the other homeless people, or climb to the top and sit on a metaphorical king’s throne!

Either way, you wouldn’t be liked by lots of people around you. Either you would mostly be ridiculed, insulted and pitied for your failure, or envied and hated for your success. Only one person can be seated on a king’s throne. Well, the good thing is that in either case, freedom is guaranteed. If you fail, you most probably will have no responsibilities and if you succeed you will be your own boss and nobody can tell you what to do, when to do it, or how to do it, either. And if you can make it to the top you can be sure that your journey there will be full of adventure, risk, learning experience, emotion, disappointment, passion, anger, excitement, betrayal, intrigue, love, self-development, action… Well, I’m sure you got what I mean: these are all the things that make you feel alive, right?

Frankly, I don’t know how it would be for you, but to be honest, it wasn’t that difficult for me to make my own choice based on my lifestyle and past experiences. And I knew one thing for certain: if I wanted to succeed following such a lifestyle, I needed an enormous amount of knowledge. (This is the reason why some people call me The Walking Library today.)

I’m sure there are many among you who will wonder who I am and how I dare to write such a book that will give you false hope. Perhaps you won’t even care what I will say here. Before jumping to conclusions, I suggest you read this first part to the end. Please don’t think this book will change your life; this book makes no such claims. My goal is not to change your life; that’s your job. No, it’s you who will change your life. My goal is to show you that you can change yourself and your worldview, because changing your life begins with exactly that. I can’t promise that all the principles I share in this book will work for you as well as they did for me, either. On the other hand, regardless of what others say, I believe in the importance of luck in life. So, know that I believe in two more points: first, we can maximize our luck through our choices (and the prices we pay) and second, if you want to change your life, you have to change yourself first. And if you can do that, yes, you can change your entire life.

What I can promise you is this though:

I will tell you my own story with the pits and pinnacles of emotion: delicious aromas of success, the extreme bitterness of disappointment, all the laughter and all the tears together with examples of hope, courage and, yes, clear madness. Such a life taught me that everything has a reason, everything comes with a price and everything can be educational.

I believe that I have no right to claim I had the worst in life, because I had glimpses of many lives that appeared to have more difficulties compared to mine. However, I surely know that my life was full of extraordinary experiences. I can comfortably claim that I experienced things that only few people do, because I don’t believe there are many who danced with the devil, skidded along schizophrenically, almost losing their minds, knowing what they went through and then returned back from it without the help of any medications – using pure self-effort – and live to tell it.

So, are you ready for the journey, folks?

Let’s begin with…

PART I

A NATURAL BORN WARRIOR

Chapter 1

I was born on February 7th, 1972 as the first child of Abdurrahman (an electronics technician) and Ayse Yeniceri (a housewife) in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dad grew up in one of the most troubled and mysterious districts of Istanbul, Tophane. His parents divorced when he was six years old and my grandfather remarried. Dad quit school in seventh grade and began to work.

His is when my father’s keen mind for electronics led him to build a movie projector from scrap metal and then show movies to the neighborhood kids. His earnings doubled in the early teen years.

According what he tells me about his childhood and adolescence, he always gave his hard-earned money to his stepmother because everybody had to make a contribution to the family. He reports that he kept only pocket money for weekend movies.

One of the things I’m very proud of is that he worked for years as a digital electronics high school teacher when I was at university, even though he had never even been a high school student himself. Based on his own touch of genius, most would think that my father was an Ivy League university graduate. 

Mom’s life was wreaked with sadness. Her father died at an early age. Her poverty was so great that at age five, she grew up as a live-in girl servant with a rich family that came from a well-rooted and noble family tree.

Mom was taken from her own poor family in a village of Trabzon. They raised her as their own daughter – according to their own words – but they didn’t send her to school and didn’t teach her how to read and write, which was her natural birthright. Instead, she was self-taught, learning by watching the family kids at home and using their learning tools.

I can proudly say that I owe my profession and fame as a book translator and author only to her, because even in early childhood, she spurred my passion for books. I was three years old when my mother got her primary school diploma.

From my life’s very beginning, I can see now that my family and I were an example of both hope and endless struggles. I took my first breaths as a premature baby (weighing only 1.75 kg, or 3.5 pounds at birth). My parents helped me survive, while burdened with significant financial problems that left my father with problems in his personal life, while at the same time placing lots of effort into keeping his business alive. He was now co-owner of an electronics store.

When I look back at those days through the things I’ve heard from my parents, I can say that they were great warriors because they managed to keep me alive through seemingly endless and repeated sicknesses. Dark and cold nights were common in Turkey during those days as I wailed, then slept – the effects of being a chronically sick baby. Mom and Dad literally lit candles to keep me warm – this was as routine as touching me to make sure I was breathing.

Mom still looks at me painfully when recalling those days. She tells me that she was trying not to love me too much because she was certain that I would die. Being premature (with an extremely weak and sensitive body as a result), violent whooping cough, very bad pneumonia, longtime jaundice – one illness after another – all these sicknesses weren’t enough to kill me.

As a matter of fact, when I was one year old and trying to learn how to walk up and down the stairs, I flew down the second story stairs, hitting my head on the corner of a doorframe. Even that didn’t hurt me enough to kill me! My head left an actual dent in the wall, perhaps an omen of things to come. Mom says that when they carried my tiny body to the hospital after falling down the stairs, my chronic fever was miraculously gone!… And as soon as they entered the doctor’s office, I was wide awake – something that almost never happened. Mom also remembers that a particular piece of wood was crushed inwards from of the impact of my head. So this was proof that I was thickheaded from birth! Well, no, all joking aside, I think it was all thanks to Angels, really.

I still remember the house we lived in when I was three years old. It was a renovated apartment from a three-story villa, surrounded by a very expansive and lush walking garden. Thunder swelled over that garden in the spring and fall, boasting a shade of green washed clean to expose brilliance in different textures. Hydrangeas abounded and spoke of heat and thirst in the summer days. I used to ride my tricycle around freely, loving the view of mulberry, fig, apple and plum trees whizzing by in a great blur. Despite the fact that my father owned an electronics store with his partner, we didn’t have a television set; they were really expensive then. But, of course, we loved to watch television and would go to an old lady’s house at night to do so. However, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) started official broadcasting in 1969. During those days, we could watch television only for a few hours a day, beginning around at 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM; that was all.

That old lady, whom I called Granny, lived next door in a solitary house that shared the same garden. She was like a real grandmother to me and I could always count on smelling fresh pastry as my bike rounded north of her house, wind blowing the scent to my