Me and Two Suitcases

A career speech I gave to graduating students at the university I once graduated from…

Today, we are here together so I can share ideas that may inspire you and help shape your journey, drawing from my own life story along the way.

But unfortunately, I can only give you the formula for my own success.

Because every success story is unique and impossible to replicate. The story I am about to tell belongs only to me, and in that sense, it cannot define anyone else’s path.

And yet, from another perspective, Two Suitcases and Me is not only my story — it is, in many ways, all of ours.

Those two suitcases symbolize the burdens, dreams, and struggles we carry throughout life.

What I am about to tell you may not perfectly match your own career dreams, lifestyle, or priorities. But perhaps it can give you an idea of how to open the door to your own future.

Success and career mean different things to different people, different dreams, and different goals.

As you live, as you see more, as you succeed and fail, you will realize that “career” is actually a relative concept.

What you consider a career may be just a success to someone else. What you consider success may simply be a beginning to another.

To put it clearly: success stories are personal. By their very nature, they cannot truly be repeated.

Your priorities may change throughout your career journey. But the things you will encounter — and the formula you will need to follow carefully — will look very much like what I am about to share with you.

First, begin with the word “I.”

Define your own goals within yourself. Goals that belong to others will only lead you into dead ends. Never forget that.

Now let’s examine, one by one, the cards that can move us forward in this life.

How do you define your goals? What triggers you the most? Which emotion can truly push you forward at full speed during this long race?

Passion…

Passion is the emotion that is hardest to destroy, even under the toughest conditions. It is the strongest emotion we have.

And if you lose it, it becomes almost impossible to find another feeling powerful enough to drive you.

The moment passion disappears, you may as well give up on your plans and quietly take your place in mediocrity.

Without passion, your equation simply cannot reach a result.

Never forget this: before your brain can make plans, your heart must first believe. And passion is the heart itself.

Passion can never belong to someone else’s dream. A goal only becomes passion when it genuinely belongs to your own interests.

You must first be able to admit your interests and talents to yourself.

Otherwise, you will eventually lose every future you try to build with borrowed desires and artificial passion.

Driving Force...

The very first obstacle you will encounter while following your passions will usually come from the people closest to you — your family.

Sometimes they support you completely. Sometimes they hit the brakes with painful force.

I call this the driving force.

For some, it comes as encouragement. For others, it comes as words meant to stop them, to convince them they are being reckless or unrealistic.

For me, it was my uncle.

When I decided to move to Canada, he called me over as the elder of the family and said:

“You’re going there just to waste the last bit of money you have. You’ll make both yourself and your family miserable.”

I still remember crying that day out of anger.

That day, I questioned my decision all over again.

People with nothing can take risks easily.

But risking everything you already have — especially when that “everything” is also the last thing your family has — that is much harder.

That was the part given to me: the great risk.

Every passion is fueled by something.

That fuel becomes your driving force — your whip.

Words meant to discourage me transformed into strength inside me.

And so… I packed my suitcases.

Then those two suitcases and I went through quite a journey together.

Courage... 

So now you have passion. The engines are running at full power.

But what comes next?

The obstacles you create yourself.

In other words… excuses.

At the root of every excuse lies the fear of failure.

And the only thing that can pull you out of that darkness is courage.

All of us carry some amount of courage inside our hearts.

Imagine this:

One day, your child comes to you and says:

“I want to become a writer.”

You pause for a moment… and suddenly the chains that once belonged to you emerge from within.

“No, that’s not realistic. You can’t make a living as a writer these days.”

But your child insists, because they are still courageous enough to chase their dreams.

And just like that, you create a cycle that passes from generation to generation.

Without realizing it, the very first link of your child’s chain begins in your own mind.

You might say:

“I once had dreams too… but then you were born. My responsibilities changed.”

If you say that, you place the burden of your unfinished dreams onto your child.

Or perhaps you want to say:

“Go after it, because I did.”

But you cannot say that either — because you didn’t.

Or maybe you finally say the truth:

“I had dreams too, but I was afraid of failing.”

That is the real truth.

And if you can admit it, then at least it becomes your truth.

First, face it.

Some of us keep our writings hidden in drawers for years.

Some of us hide our ideas and plans deep inside our hearts.

But remember this:

The courage you carry inside only grows when you use it.

I say this to you today as someone who has published two books and is writing a third.

The moment we allow excuses beginning with “But…” to stand between us and our dreams, we fail to realize that years later we will be left carrying deep regrets.

And when regrets accumulate, they become a lifetime of “what ifs.”

No one can fix the excuses you carefully create, shape, and paint for yourself.

The only cure is how strongly you carry your dream.

I had countless reasons to give up.

And many times, I came very close to doing exactly that.

In fact, at one point, I was literally flying above my biggest excuse.

Determination...

The day I left for New York to restart my life from zero, carrying everything I owned — along with my dreams — in my pockets, was September 11.

9/11.

The engines of the plane malfunctioned mid-flight, before we had even crossed the ocean.

The aircraft shook violently as it turned back.

People were screaming in panic.

The sounds coming from beneath the plane made it feel as though it might split apart in midair.

Passengers were praying.

The woman sitting beside me held my hand tightly while luggage fell from the overhead compartments onto our heads.

And I remember saying to myself:

“Well, Harun… I guess this is the end.”

I had never been so close to death before.

After an hour and a half of fear, we landed safely to applause. We all felt reborn.

Three hours later, we boarded another plane and took off again.

Two hours into the flight, we learned about the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.

As chaos spread across the world, our plane turned back once again.

After eight hours in the air, I found myself back in the exact same airport I had left with those two suitcases.

Two suitcases and me.

And I thought:

“Maybe this just isn’t meant to happen.”

It felt as if life itself was trying to warn me not to go.

At that moment, I suddenly had countless excuses.

I had to decide once again whether to stay or leave.

And once again…

I chose to go.

Without even opening those two suitcases.

Without allowing myself — or anyone else — to change my mind.

For an entire week, while stubbornly refusing to unpack, I wore my father’s clothes and waited for flights to America to reopen.

That is how determined I was.

Determination is a magical word.

Because if I had unpacked those suitcases that day, I am absolutely certain that the person standing here giving this speech today would not be me.

Work...

How many times a day do we quietly ask ourselves:

“What am I even doing here?”

A place we don’t belong.

A profession we don’t belong in.

A desk that never truly feels ours.

A work life that suffocates us no matter how hard we try.

A life where we feel outside of it even while living inside it.

Yes — the right word is work.

While studying at this university, I nearly got expelled after failing three consecutive semesters.

I wasn’t lazy.

I just didn’t want to go to school.

In fact, I avoided it whenever possible.

Then in my final term, instead of getting expelled, I decided to graduate.

I completed 26 credits in two years and graduated several times on the High Honor list.

After graduation, I interned at Arçelik and then started working at Temsa.

But after one year, I realized that the place I had reached in life did not match the career I truly wanted.

Something was wrong with my passions, my goals, my dreams.

So I started over from scratch.

I moved to Canada.

Knowing what you truly want — and developing yourself in that direction — is incredibly important.

That was when I realized something else:

My real work was only just beginning.

Focus...

Life makes everyone write their own success story.

That is why you should focus not on others — not on what they think or value — but on your own goal.

And here we meet another powerful word:

Focus.

Focus on what?

On whatever it is you truly want.

Focus on it.

And don’t take your eyes off it until you finally hold it in your hands.

Remember those two suitcases I mentioned earlier?

Two years after leaving Temsa, I found myself standing at Vancouver Airport with them.

As if the entire country had been waiting for me saying:

“Ah yes, Harun is coming — we have the perfect job ready for him!”

Of course, it wasn’t that easy.

That tiny two-letter word:

Job.

Easy to spell. Hard to find.

In Canada, engineers were expected to hold a Professional Engineering certification, and my diploma alone was not enough.

So I started studying IT at Capilano University, thinking I wanted to become a software developer.

Meanwhile, I tried desperately to get a newspaper delivery job just to earn some pocket money.

I kept calling every other day, but my turn never came.

Then came other delivery jobs.

Flowers.

Pizza.

Bananas and oranges to grocery stores.

And eventually, background roles in Hollywood productions.

Scooby-Doo

Eddie Murphy

Kurt Russell

While studying, I also started writing computer games.

Websites. Databases. Everything at once.

A complete mess, honestly.

And through all of it, I carried my passions, dreams, and the risk of losing everything like a ticking bomb in my pocket.

When I first arrived in Canada, I worked 16 hours a day.

And eventually, after graduating, I founded my first company with only $3,000.

With the work ethic I had built, I turned that company into a telecommunications business serving 50,000 customers in just three years.

Difference...

Now we come to another powerful word:

Difference.

This is the word that will make you grow.

The glue that helps you hold on.

What makes you different?

Can you create your own difference — and recognize it?

No matter what profession you choose — professor, doctor, engineer, truck driver, worker — there are already millions of people doing the same thing.

So why should career choose you among all those people?

What makes you different?

That difference becomes your signature.

The thing that makes you chosen.

Why should people come to you?

What can you do differently?

Fine, maybe you already do your job well.

But among thousands of people who also do their jobs well… what will make your work stand out?

You must find that answer.

Instead of repeating the same things every day, do things you have never done before.

Otherwise, one day you will find yourself watching extraordinary people through a magnifying glass, wondering how they became different.

Luck...

One of the strongest and most convincing excuses people hide behind is luck.

Of course luck matters.

And you never know where you might encounter it.

But as long as you keep working, keep running, keep moving — you increase your chances of meeting it.

One day, I disagreed with my director at work and was called into a meeting room.

They fired me.

It felt devastating.

Everything suddenly became uncertainty.

It felt like the end.

And yet…

Two months later, I started a new job.

I succeeded there and began climbing the career ladder.

Years passed.

The company that fired me eventually shut down.

And the company I worked for decided to relocate.

To where?

To the very same building where I had once been escorted out carrying a cardboard box.

Years later, I found myself once again on the same floor, in the same office.

Life is strange.

On my first morning there, I quietly walked into that meeting room where I had been fired years before.

I sat down.

My knees were shaking.

I placed both hands on the table and relived, in every detail, the moment I had spent two years trying to erase from my memory.

At the time, instead of saying everything I truly wanted to say, I had simply replied:

“The decision has already been made. Whatever I say now would be pointless. I wish you well.”

And yes…

It truly had turned out well.

For me.

Years later, I became a director at one of the world’s major social media platforms.

Then the CEO of the company that fired me sent me a message on LinkedIn asking:

“Can we talk?”

“Of course,” I replied.

He offered to mentor me in leadership development — for free.

I trained with him for a year.

And with that training, I eventually rose into senior executive leadership roles at some of the world’s leading unicorn companies.

Now think about this carefully.

The moment you decide “Everything is over,” your mind stops moving.

And when the mind stops moving, growth stops too.

But we must always keep moving toward the next goal.

Because once you reach one goal, you realize another one is already waiting for you.

As Louis Pasteur once said:

“Luck favors only the prepared mind.”

While luck undoubtedly matters, sitting around waiting for it is a waste of potential.

Break your routine, embrace the unfamiliar, and commit to the work.

Maintain your readiness and overcome inertia with action. When luck doesn't come your way, stop asking why it hasn’t smiled on you—start learning to create your own.

What cards were you given?

Among these eight cards from my own life story, which ones do you hold in your own hands?

Passion. Courage. Driving force. Determination. Work. Difference. Focus. Luck.

What cards did life give you?

Each of us begins life from a different starting point.

Some begin with advantages.

Some begin from zero.

But what truly matters is how you play your cards.

A weak hand can become an incredible opportunity with the right strategy.

And a strong hand can lose every advantage through poor decisions.

In this game we call life — and I say “game” carefully, because life is a game I take very seriously — success comes from using your cards wisely.

Your strategy, the risks you take, and the way you transform obstacles into opportunities will shape your journey.

How you play your cards is entirely up to you.

And what matters most is not the cards dealt to others, but how you play your own.

After all, even people born holding every advantage do not always win this game.

Every move you make will either bring you closer to your goals or further away from them.

And never forget:

Everything in this game begins with you.

Finally, I want to say this:

You are studying at an international university.

Value that.

Graduating from this school will help you adapt easily to different cultures.

After graduation, maybe you will return home.

Or maybe you will travel the world.

While living abroad, I saw countless people who wanted to leave but never could.

And countless others who left — only to come back.

When they returned, I saw them take apart the puzzle they had built abroad and pack its pieces back into their suitcases.

I saw them trying to create a meaningful picture again using new pieces to replace the missing ones.

And when they stayed abroad, I saw them rebuilding those pieces in a new place.

No one knows how many pieces will be lost on the road… or how much the puzzle itself will change.

At this stage of your life, when you are deciding the direction of your future…

My advice is this:

Do not listen to anyone.

Not even the people closest to you.

Listen to your own heart.

Because you already know:

In life, there will always be departures and returns.

Sometimes people leave only so they can one day return.

Returning is not failure.

Returning is not becoming less.

Returning means leaving some pieces of yourself behind on the road while discovering new ones somewhere else.

And when you finally return, realizing that you are not smaller at all…

But bigger.

Wider.

Stronger.

And returning is not truly “going back” either.

Because the place you return to is no longer the same.

Life moved on without you.

The empty space your absence created has already been filled.

That void was never as important to life as you once imagined.

To me, life is ultimately about balance and harmony.

But whether life makes room for you again when you leave or return — or pushes you away instead — is something you can never know beforehand.

And if you absolutely want one final piece of advice…

Remember this:

The definition of success belongs to you.

And success is not always money or status.

Success does not belong to people who endlessly ask “Why?”

It belongs to those who say:

“Why not?”

And who keep chasing their goals all over again.

And one day, maybe you will come back to this very hall and give your own speech here too.

No matter what road you take, or what conditions you face…

May your path always remain open.

#coaching #mentoring #leadership #awareness #career