A line you underline in a book, a seemingly offhand remark from a teacher, a single scene in a film... You
might not understand it in the moment, but when you look back later, you realize: that thing opened a
door inside you.
My life has been full of such doors. The book that never left my bedside in childhood was The Collected
Poems of Orhan Veli. His simple language, his free verse, his view of life enchanted me. Years later,
when my own poetry books were published, I looked back and realized — that same freedom, that same
sincerity had found its way into my own lines. Some might call it coincidence. I don’t.
In my youth, another companion on my nightstand was Montaigne’s Essays. His honesty, his selfreflection, his depth of thought left a lasting impact on me. And now, at 57, as I build the Purposeful
Learning model, I remember — he, too, began writing at this age. Coincidence again? Maybe not. Maybe
some things ripen within us, and their time comes with quiet maturity.
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is still beside my bed. I open it at random and seek answers to my day’s
questions — and more often than not, I find them. Because some books don’t just speak to your mind —
they speak to your soul. They aren’t merely read, they’re lived.
These weren’t just books to me; they were turning points. Each one altered my direction. Even in my
novel The Initiate’s Circle, it was no accident that the final figure guiding the protagonist to the
mountaintop was a philosopher. That character was Marcus Aurelius — a reflection of the part of me
that seeks meaning through wisdom, thought, and inner discipline. The Stoic wisdom that’s guided me
all my life reveals itself sometimes in a sentence, sometimes in a posture, sometimes in silence.
That’s what Purposeful Learning values most — this kind of learning. It embraces moments when
knowledge touches the heart, when experience becomes the lesson, when ordinary moments transform
into extraordinary awareness. Because sometimes, it’s not information but intuition that changes
everything.
And if reading these words made you recall such a moment in your own past… then perhaps your
transformation has already begun. A book, a lesson, a single sentence — they can all be sparks. What
matters is whether you feel the flame inside.