About space, love, and what remains after silence
At first, it seemed like a bare, empty park to me. Small, boring, not well-frequented, with only a few benches and an atmosphere that never drew me in. I had been there before, a few times with other people, but it never grabbed me. I had no connection with it.
It was just a place. A backdrop.
Then, during the most emotionally intense period of my life, when a relationship shattered me and opened me at the same time, I started carrying an energy I didn’t know how to release. I felt the urge to leave the house, to walk, to move, to escape something I didn’t understand but that pulsed in my chest.
And I went to the park. Not to admire it. But to survive.
I walked for two to three hours at a time, several times a week. The days were too hot — it was summer, 35 degrees. So I went in the evenings, at night. Moving in rhythm, fast steps, headphones on. I walked to gather myself, to feel my body, to calm down.
Back then, I didn’t really see it.
The park was just a vessel where I emptied my pain.
Winter came, and I took a break.
Then spring. That was the first time I began to truly see it.
I took off my headphones. I touched the leaves, smelled the flowers, sat on the ground, on a blanket, under the gentle rays of the sun. I began to be be in the park.
I found a place. A corner. A presence.
It was the first outdoor space where I felt safe, without needing to speak.
A space that demanded nothing, yet gave me everything I needed: pause, simplicity, stability.
As I healed, my connection with the park deepened.
Then, during a difficult moment, I fell ill.
And without realizing it, I drifted away.
The park had begun to irritate me. It was crowded. There were fairs, music, chaos. I compared it to another, quieter park.
I ran away, looking for something else. But even there, there was noise. And I came back.
Back in the park, I understood something profound:
It’s not mine. It will never be just mine. But it exists, and it is there for me. As much as it can be.
That’s when I learned to love it without trying to control it.
Not to wish it silent, but to accept it as it is.
And to choose, in its midst, my own corner of quiet.
Perhaps we humans are the same way: we have multiple relationships in parallel — with neighbors, colleagues, parents, institutions, friends. Yet somewhere, in a corner, appears the chosen relationship- with someone you entrust your private space to.
For a long time, I thought that love had to be solely mine.
That if shared with the world, it was no longer ours.
But today I know something different: true love shared with someone naturally flows to others. Not as a loss, but as an extension.
You cannot control love. You can only cultivate it.
Invest in it. Nurture it.
Everything we love becomes more beautiful.
Whether it’s a mandala, a meal, a flower, a park, a person — everything we love comes alive under our touch.
The park taught me all this.
It was the quiet paternal figure I had always longed for.
And maybe, on that night, when I smelled the flowers and sat alone on a bench, needing nothing else, it was the first time I truly felt:
I am ready. Space has opened within me. And it is a good space.