Aral Haykır

something relaxing and focusing regarding a long drive. today we drove back from alaçatı to istanbul, around 6 hours, 600 kilometers. i finished the last stretch of shoe dog by phil knight, co-founder of nike.

gave me the tears more than once phil knight, such an inspiring story that i want to gift to my dad and couple of friends with the note "why not us?".. and that last stretch of the book where he jumps to 2007 and recalls the moment he learnt his son has died during a dive, and updates us on the latest of the rest of the buttfaces...

building a culture and devoting yourself to it.

not knowing anything but growing the business step by step, finding out along the way.. threading the fine line between everything you have hoped for and losing it all.

it's always tough for me to compile all the things any long form writing (or any long content for that matter) made me think.. i just hope it accumulates somewhere in my brain as lessons from the "been there, done that" people. but i guess i can capture shoe dog as: why not us? why don't we try our shot at it? what are we afraid of? what have we got to lose? why don't we go at it with all we've got? and yes indeed aral, why don't you?

also a word of respect for audible and all the narrators in there.. you begin a listen and it's a completely new sound, it irritates you at first, it's foreign, it's a frequency you have never heard before, and before long, it becomes one with the text and the author, the sound itself starts etching memories in your brain, becomes an old friend telling you the best advice you've ever had, you want to chime in, ask some questions, listen more...

now i'll look for the next biopic/auto to listen to. so much to learn from these guys, and i just love the way they tear me away from the daily problems of my own, and share with me others' problems, far away in time and space, when they also felt vulnerable, hopeless, uncertain, powerless, but somehow they pushed through and survived it all to tell their story.

i think that's one of my goals. to live a life that's worthwhile for some narrator to pick up and read aloud, for some young mind somewhere to feed off of.

and phil, thank you for sharing yours. thank you for nike. thank you for your belief in yourself, your passion towards what you loved, all the lessons you have collected. it was truly an amazing read that i will ever remember and come back to.

— Aral