Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”.

I often ask myself; “what is normal, what is strength, and what is intelligence?”. The topic of this blog post focuses on themes of HUMILITY, ADAPTABILITY, and ACCEPTANCE.

Craig D. Lounsbrough says “Intelligence without wisdom is nothing more than stupidity that looks smart.” Rikki Rogers says’s “Strength doesn’t come from what you can do, it comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t”,  and what does it mean to be adaptable? Psychology tells us that it’s the ability to adjust your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to changing situations and conditions.

Before heading to Turkey from South Africa, I was under no illusions about the fact that we would be traveling at a time like no other. I was under no illusion about the fact that challenges would come our way from a variety of different angles. I was under no illusion about the fact that we were going to have to be adaptable. I like to put myself in the thick of things. I like to challenge myself, my fears, my beliefs.

 I wanted to see, first hand, how people, places, situations, and conditions were adapting to the change. To do this, I needed to travel. For the past 4 years, I’ve spent half my time working remotely, so this was not a problem from a work perspective. We picked a date, NOT a destination, and agreed that on our chosen date, we would fly to whichever country would have us. That country was Turkey. 

As the good old adage says, be careful what you wish for. 

The first thing that changed was our booked flights to Istanbul. We got notification from the airline that our flight would only be departing 2 days after our booked date. We were grateful for the extra time to tie up some loose ends before our departure. At this time, however naively, we did not do our daily online check for Covid travel restriction updates. We did, however, ‘verify’ at the South African check-in counter in South Africa, that we were able to Self Quarantine in Turkey.  But no - this turned out not to be the case. The changes in regulations over only two days were all it took to put us on an immediate journey of adaptability. A journey that triggered every emotion. A journey that challenged us to become aware of how we were falling into a state of “what we were used to” instead of “what we were discovering”.

It all began after the easy, pleasant flight into Istanbul on Turkish Airlines.

On arriving at passport control the officer on duty started waving my passport around vigorously,  declaring loudly “South African, South African!” The moment was quite surreal. 

Other officers arrived. They took our passports and made us follow them. No one spoke English well enough to tell us what was actually happening. Hours passed and eventually after managing to get a vending machine snack someone told us that South Africans could no longer self-quarantine and that we were going to a STATE FACILITY to quarantine for 14 days. The rules had changed...just two days ago. This indeed was how we were to begin our exploration.

Without laboring the fact, state quarantine, which was free, is really not something I’d choose to do. I’ll summarise with a few photos, and by letting you know that I believe we were amongst the first people to use this facility.

It was not ready for use. We spent the first few hours trying to leave, the next few hours in disbelief, and the next few in meditation. On sort of accepting the fact of where we were, we managed to hunt down some cleaning materials and we got scrubbing. This was a very humbling experience.  For me, cleanliness is the beginning of a happy life. A clean environment seems to clear my mind and leaves space for better thoughts and activity or simply stillness and calm. So we scrubbed and scrubbed. 

There was no internet, no hotel-type facilities like a kettle, tea or coffee, no fridge, no cups, no plates, no food, no drinks - NADA!! Just 4 empty beds in a dorm-style room. Oh yes, and they wanted us to share with two strangers. This was a hard NO for us so we just sat on our luggage and shook our heads from side to side until we got our own room.  

On the second day, we got internet use. Unpredictable WiFi but internet use nonetheless, and in those few lucky moments, we spent three more days calling embassies, consulates, friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, trying desperately to be ‘released’ because of the poor conditions and the fact that we’d arranged an apartment to self-quarantine in. Nothing worked. It was time to surrender and adapt to our new digs. 

I was reminded this morning of a saying “Life is like riding a bike, to keep your balance you must keep moving”. In our case, movement was going to be a challenge whilst being confined to our room, so we had to get creative. 

We started by moving the beds around, placing the ones we slept in closest to the natural light leaving a large space in the middle of the room. Thank goodness we had a big window that opened fully and if you leaned out of it and avoided looking down, the view was quite lovely. We could see a small slither of the Sea of Marmara. We could see the colorful buildings set in front of the surrounding Anatolian Mountain backdrop. The world below us was a view of armed guards, a few dumpsters, and the road where we could watch the world go by. Countless Delivery Riders, none of them wearing helmets. Interesting intersections, pedestrians, preachers with a captive audience and not too far away, a mosque, calling its followers to prayer 5 times a day. We came to find this call to prayer soothing and we sat in still meditation when we heard it. 

We realized that one of the things we most frequently felt there was too little of at home, was time. And now we had so much of it. Our only distraction was a knock on the door, three times a day, with water and ‘food’.  We did yoga, we did Tai Chi and we danced to playlists (we would eventually no longer want to hear). We had real, meaningful conversations. We laughed. We cried. We sat in stillness and we shifted. We accepted. We adapted.

In the end; and once we were released, we realized that our quarantine period was necessary in order for us to be given the freedom to explore the ancient city of Istanbul, rich in history and story. It gave us the freedom to explore the beautiful country that is Turkey, to move and discover the magic that appears when you change your perspective and adapt to a situation. It led us to our incredible Two-Wheel Ride along the Mediterranean coast where we met Warm, Welcoming People.

If anyone had asked me if I would choose State quarantine for 14 days before we left South Africa, it would be a definite NO. Was it worth the lessons of humility, adaptability, and acceptance? Absolutely! Moving from Discontent to Content was when all The Magic began.