SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN Between Image and Reality

"There is neither the sorrow of death, nor the joy of life.

We are somewhere between the insincerity of 

'How are you?' and the pretence of 'I'm fine.'"

— attributed to Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı

Somewhere in between…

A place even we struggle to name.

Perhaps we are not in the middle of great sorrow. Yet neither do we carry the kind of joy that lifts us out of bed with eagerness. Life moves on; the day begins, work gets done.

Are you sad?

"No," you say.

Are you happy?

This time, the answer does not come as quickly.

We are not low enough to call ourselves broken, nor bright enough inside to believe that we are well. That is why "somewhere in between" lands so deeply: it names not only what we feel, but our inability to name it.

Then someone asks, "How are you?" and we answer without thinking: "I'm fine."

My father has a phrase for moments like this: "Saying 'I'm fine' has become a habit."

Sometimes "I'm fine" is not an account of how we feel. It is a small refuge that lets us keep moving without having to explain ourselves.

Perhaps the problem is not that we cannot find the words. Sometimes we simply do not want to speak. In that reluctance, a long answer collapses into one safe sentence: "I'm fine."

The real danger begins when we start giving the same easy answer to ourselves. A person is not always unwell; sometimes they are simply a little distant from themselves. We may have no appetite for understanding what is happening inside, yet still have the energy to arrange how life looks from the outside.

We close the inner world with one sentence and spend hours constructing its image.

Is the life we are living truly ours — or are we carrying a life we think looks good on us?

Are We Living a Lifestyle — or Merely Wearing It?

Recently I came across a summer trend called "board short summer": surf shorts, faded T-shirts, flip-flops, uncombed hair. Even people who have never surfed want to look like surfers. [1]

What interested me was the response from actual surfers. Surfing, they said, is not an image you can pull over your head. It demands that you read the sea, wait, fall, get back up, and live the life behind the look. [1]

The saying attributed to Rumi comes to mind: "Either be as you appear, or appear as you are."

Or, as Sting sings in Englishman in New York: "Be yourself, no matter what they say." [3]

Centuries and languages change; the question does not. It is the distance between who we are and whom we choose to display.

And that distance seems to be widening.

Before living a life, we decide what it should look like. We know what to wear, where to sit, what music to play and which book to leave on the table.

The image is complete.

But life does not always move into the picture.

A report from Bodrum this week offered a striking example. People who wanted to appear as though they owned a luxury lifestyle were paying up to 70,000 Turkish lira for a ten-minute yacht photo and video shoot. [2]

They were not really renting a yacht.

They were renting the image of a life they had never lived.

A handful of frames could be released across several days, turning ten minutes of staging into the impression of an established life.

There is nothing wrong with expressing ourselves through clothes, tastes, books and places. The problem begins when the image replaces the experience.

You can buy the signs of a way of life. You cannot rent the experience that gives it meaning.

The shoot ends. The yacht moves away. The screen goes dark. What remains is the person behind the picture.

Perhaps real visibility begins not when we present ourselves well, but when someone notices us while we are making no effort to be seen.

The Place of Strangers in Our Lives

There is a municipal worker who sweeps our street. I do not know his name, and he probably does not know mine. We simply greet each other whenever our paths cross.

The other day, when he saw me, he said: "Where have you been? I haven't seen you around lately."

He knew nothing about my life — where I work, where I had been, or why I had not appeared for a while. But he had noticed my absence.

Sometimes we feel more visible in a question from someone who does not know our name than in a photograph seen by thousands.

In one, we prepare to be seen.
In the other, we are noticed simply because we are there.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter called relationships like these "weak ties". Weak does not mean insignificant; it means they are less intimate than family or close friendship, yet they connect us to people, places and communities beyond our immediate circle. [4]

Research by Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn suggests that even brief encounters with acquaintances can strengthen well-being and our sense of belonging. [5]

We do not need to know someone's entire story for them to become part of our day. Repeated crossings, a nod, a greeting, and the fact that someone notices when we disappear can be enough.

Our relationship with a city grows in much the same way. We learn its sounds, meet the same faces, and gradually the city begins to recognise us too.

But these encounters have their own hours — and those hours are changing.

The City Wakes at Night

At midday, the streets empty. When the sun eases, doors open, walks begin and tables spill outdoors.

Climate change is altering not only the weather, but the timetable of life.

A night above 20°C is known as a "tropical night". [6]

Climate Central estimates that high nighttime temperatures cost the average person nearly 56 hours of sleep a year — almost seven nights. [7]

The number sounds dramatic, but its everyday meaning is familiar: struggling to fall asleep, waking without feeling restored, tiring more quickly and carrying less patience into the day.

Heat no longer decides only when we step outside. It reaches into who we are the next morning.

Mediterranean cities have understood the rhythm of heat for centuries: narrow streets, shutters, courtyards and life arranged around the more bearable hours. We too are retreating into the evening again.

There is one difference.

Night once ended the heat of the day. Now it sometimes carries it into darkness.

Perhaps it is no longer enough to know a city only by the face it shows in daylight.

Is Looking No Longer Enough?

We are not content merely to observe cities from a distance. Increasingly, we do not want to observe anything from a distance.

At Paris's Atelier des Lumières, images and music surround the visitor across walls and floors. At teamLab Planets in Tokyo, people walk through water and the works change in response to their presence. [8] [9]

We once stood in front of a painting. Now we want the painting to surround us.

Do we want to enter the work — or do we want to place ourselves inside its image?

The phone comes out. The angle is found. Sometimes we spend longer deciding how to share an artwork than allowing it to affect us.

Yet the appetite for original works remains powerful. Tate Modern sold more than 41,000 advance tickets for its Frida Kahlo exhibition, while the National Gallery's Van Gogh show drew more than 334,000 visitors. In a world of endless digital reproduction, people still want to stand in the same room as the real thing. [10]

Perhaps looking has not become insufficient.

Perhaps we are losing the ability to look.

Seeing is quick. Looking takes time.

And at the table, just as in the gallery, we do not consume only what is before us. We consume its story, presentation, status — and the class we assign to it.

Do Cuisines Have a Class?

Californios in San Francisco has become the first Mexican restaurant in the world to receive three Michelin stars. The achievement reopened a familiar question: why has Mexican food so often been expected to remain inexpensive and casual, while French or Japanese cuisine is readily accepted as refined and prestigious? [11]

Who decides the class of a cuisine?

Is it the ingredient, the technique, the plate — or the figure at the bottom of the bill?

The same dish can be called "home cooking" in a small family restaurant and a "gastronomic experience" when served on white linen with a carefully written story.

There is value in fine ingredients, skill and presentation. But if we recognise a dish only after it has been made expensive, should that not trouble us?

Our own cuisine has travelled through generations largely in the hands of unnamed people: women whose recipes were never written down, hands that knew the texture of dough without measurement, cooks who perfected one dish over a lifetime.

Their work was not called "haute cuisine". Perhaps because it was not served at a high table.

Over the years, I have sat at very different tables. At some, the plates were flawless and little remained in the memory. At others, the food was simple, but the warmth around the table stayed with me for years.

Perhaps cuisines do not have classes. We give them classes.

Some food is not designed to impress you. It feeds you, warms you, and returns you to a place, a time or a person.

Perhaps the true class of a table is not determined by what is placed on it, but by what remains with you when you rise.

Somewhere In Between

We began with the words "somewhere in between".

Behind the feelings we cover with "I'm fine", the lives we stage, the strangers who notice our absence, the changing hours of cities, the artworks we enter through a camera, and the tables we classify, the same question remains:

What are we really looking at?

The image — or the reality?

Perhaps reconnecting with life does not require a grand transformation. An honest answer, a greeting in the street, a painting given our full attention, or a table we remember may be enough.

So I return to the question at the beginning: "How are you?"

This time, before answering "I'm fine", I want to pause.

Perhaps Saturday's most precious gift is not a different answer, but the time to ask whether the answer is truly ours.

We are somewhere in between.

Perhaps not where we are lost.

Perhaps where we begin to return to ourselves.

Editorial Note

This essay is a work of personal commentary based on publicly available reporting, academic research, institutional sources and the author's own observations. References to people, institutions, brands, works or businesses do not imply endorsement, sponsorship or affiliation. Facts and figures reflect sources available on the publication date and may later be revised. The opening passage attributed to Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı and the saying attributed to Rumi are presented as widely circulated attributions, not verified claims of authorship. The brief quotation from Sting is used solely for critical and contextual commentary, with attribution. Personal anecdotes omit identifying details. Substantiated factual errors will be corrected or clarified. © Orkun Akçasarı. All rights reserved. The full text may not be reproduced without permission; short quotations should credit the author and link to the original article.

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