A short talk (YouTube video) in which the speaker recounts a Turkish send-off tradition—friends and family throwing buckets of water while saying “may you be like water”—and uses this metaphor to advise that when encountering roadblocks one should flow around them, adapt trajectories, and keep moving forward in one’s career.
Where I'm from in Turkey when someone is leaving on a major journey the family, the friends and all the neighbors collect around with buckets of water in their hands and as the person is driving away or riding away they throw these buckets of water after the person and the message is may you be like water. May you always flow to a destination just like water does, right? I mean if there's a rock that is blocking the way the road of the water it'll go around it or sometimes it'll go under it but it always goes someplace. So that's a send off that they send you away with. And very often in my career when I've had blocks, roadblocks, I've always said I can flow around this. I might not always end up exactly where I thought I was going to end up. I might end up in a different place, I might have a different trajectory but I'm always moving forward.
