Between Everywhere and Nowhere

Between Everywhere and Nowhere

  • Sparvens visa

    Sparvens visa

    Hör du sparven lilla, far du inte illa,
    när som vintern är så sträng och kall.

    Utan mycken möda, lär du dig att föda,
    som är nästan minst av fåglar all.

    Listen, little sparrow, do you not suffer
    when winter is so harsh and cold?

    Yet with little effort, you learn to feed yourself,
    though you are among the smallest of all birds.

    This is how the Swedish folk song begins.

    Most of the time, when we read literature, we try to understand all kinds of ideas. We turn the pages of numerous books, sit and think about answers, or try to find a meaning. Sometimes we are not even aware that we are searching for one, or that we are in need of one. But suddenly, a song catches your ear. Its melody gently invites your mind, and its lyrics take your hand into their unique universe.

    Sometimes it is as simple as that.

    Kan du fågel lätta, mig helt kort berätta,
    från det allra första, minsta med det största.

    Säg om dig behagar, om din levnads dagar,
    ifrån början till din levnads slut.

    Little bird, can you tell me briefly
    of all things, from the smallest to the greatest?

    Tell me, if you will, about your life,
    of all your days, from its very beginning to its end.

    Sometimes I wish I had a magic lamp or a magic sphere that could tell me what I need right now, why I want a certain thing, and why I have what I have. Then I realize that we already have something like that in our lives. The only difference is that it does not always come in the shape of a sphere or in the form of a lamp.

    Sometimes it is a folk song.

    Although I try to understand this “flow” and accompany it, I cannot help asking: Could this have beenthat instead? Could I have had this rather thanthat? Whythis? Why not that?

    Stinn uti min kräva, hämtad utav näva,
    klara vattendroppar utan silver koppar.

    My belly is full, filled with clear drops of water,
    offered by hand, without a silver cup.

    I found one of the most persuasive truths in the lyrics of a Swedish folk song.

    It was this, not that, because this was what I needed to have, what I needed to experience, what I needed to leave behind. Although this sounds like a cliché, it is not as easy to digest and accept as it may sound.

    The sparrow found water. It had what it needed, without needing a silver cup. It needed water, and somehow, it found the water it needed.

    Perhaps this is where I started thinking about how we live.

    Schopenhauer famously described life as swinging like a pendulum between pain and boredom – the pain of unfulfilled desire and the boredom that follows when our desires are satisfied.

    Sometimes I think that nowadays, instead of our lives simply swinging like a pendulum, we have become pendulums ourselves. But between what are we – pendulums – oscillating exactly?

    Oscillating between possibilities and realities. Between what we hoped for and what we found. 

    Between what we wanted and what we got. Between what could have been and what actually happened.

    We start with “what I want” and end with “what I could not get”.

    Somewhere between these two ends, however, there is a life being lived.

    And I sometimes think that this is the part we forget.

    We become so occupied with the distance between what we hoped for and what we found that we stop seeing everything that happens in between. We look at one end and then the other, comparing, measuring, imagining alternatives. We wonder whether we should have had this instead of that, whether we should have been somewhere else, whether another possibility would have suited us better.

    And while we are doing this, life is happening in the middle.

    Are our lives, or our existence, really all about our desires and our failures? Why do we reduce everything to such simple terms when doing so does not even serve us? Why do we reduce ourselves to pendulums?

    Why do we keep asking what we could have had while forgetting to notice what has already found its way to us?

    Anything and everything may go right or wrong. You may have this and not have that now. It may be your failure or your success.

    But perhaps there is something else happening too.

    The sparrow needed water. It found water.

    And perhaps we, too, keep meeting what we need in forms we would never have thought to ask for. Not because everything necessarily happens for a reason, and not because every experience is secretly designed for us, but because life is not made up only of what we hoped to find.

    It is also made up of what we encounter along the way – what sustains us, what changes us, what teaches us, what we leave behind, and what allows us to continue.

    Sometimes I wonder whether this is why certain things arrive in our lives exactly when they do.

    We may never know.

    Maybe you are served your coffee in a cartoon cup rather than a ceramic one because, at that moment, you were simply meant to have some coffee. Maybe the ceramic cup would have made no difference at all. Maybe you were protected from a possibility you could not see. Or maybe you are supposed to invent something out of the burning sensation in your hand.

    Or maybe it was simply a cartoon cup.

    Who knows?

    We have our desires and our achievements. Where are they now?

    What kind of feelings do your achievements awaken in you? And what about your desires?

    I decided that I do not want to be a pendulum, missing my life while oscillating between “what could have been” and “what could be”.

    I want to notice what happens in between.

    This may also be a starting point. I will definitely continue wanting, wondering, imagining different possibilities, and maybe bargaining with the universe, but I decided to stop living in the void of the distance between what I hoped for and what I found. I do not want this spectrum to be the whole measure of my life.

    I have come to see the simple yet warm sentence of Elizabeth von Arnim a little differently:

    How grateful I felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness.

    It may not be about believing that everything happened exactly as it was supposed to happen.

    It may be about realizing that, somehow, we are here.

    And that somewhere between what we hoped for and what we found, there was a life that brought us here.

    The sparrow did not need a silver cup.

    It needed water. And it found it.
    Then it flew and landed in her garden.

    Artwork: Rex. I eskizas iš vitražų diptiko, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

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  • The Scale of Being Good and Nice™

    The Scale of Being Good and Nice™

    I do not take revenge. Because I am self-centered. Just a little bit.

    I would love to feel like a saint after realizing and confessing the first sentence, but it is what it is.

    What am I, then? Good and nice, or just strategic?

    Can choosing not to be harmful make you a good one automatically?

    Where is the line between goodness by instinct and goodness by choice?

    Is one more valuable than another? Can intention determine the quality of goodness? Does goodness have to carry a certain quality? Or is it just about the absence of harm?

    We have all been treated unfairly at some point. Betrayed. Gossiped about. Excluded.

    What was your reaction? What was your stance? What did you decide?

    If you ask me, I do nothing.

    At least, this is how it looks from the outside.

    No drama. No revenge.

    People around me sometimes criticize me for acting like a prophet. They expect some kind of reaction — perhaps anger or revenge, something that would make the situation feel more balanced.

    But when I think about my nothing-quality reaction, I realize that the serenity behind it does not come from my being a moral slave or a saint. It comes simply from self-centrism.

    I was simply emphasizing myself in my own life a little more.

    I was afraid that those people would put a wedge between the person I was today and the person I aspire to be tomorrow. So, I learned to remove people from my life when I felt that they were taking me somewhere I did not want to go.

    I chose not to spoil myself in their mud.

    Basic logic 101: you are no longer part of my life. And if you could treat me like that, then I was probably never truly a part of your life either.

    Maybe this was the ordinary of the ordinary.

    Maybe ruling over my free will was my ordinary way of testing the borders of who I was.

    Sorry to have the audacity to make it all about getting to know myself.

    I saw those kinds of situations as social experiments. I would play out, like, a hundred different scenarios in my head, just to see where they would take me.

    Doing the right thing was also feeding my subtle arrogance. There was something satisfying about knowing that I was the one who did not do the bad thing.

    What is required to do the bad thing or to be bad? Impulses? Lack of thought? Being afraid of spending time with yourself? Taking revenge because of what you are lacking in your default package of life? Something different?

    Sometimes it is good to enjoy the privilege of being the one who did nothing wrong — the one who does not have to carry the moral burden of the original act and is therefore free to decide what to do next.

    I am not talking about life-threatening events, of course. I am talking about the ordinary human situations where someone chooses to hurt you, and you still have the freedom to decide what you are going to do with that experience.

    There is an obvious comfort in putting your head on the pillow knowing that you did no harm to anybody.

    And perhaps this is why I keep coming back to being good and nice.

    But again, is it goodness in me, or just something that once helped my ancestors survive?

    Do you believe that human beings have a “tamable” good essence? Or is it simply our mastery of free will?

    Honestly, I do not think everyone has, or can have, a “good and nice” essence. Maybe none of us truly has one in our most plain forms.

    I sometimes think the problem with this narrative is that we take for granted that every human being has this “tamable” core.

    But how can we build the good and nice if this is the situation?

    Too much is expected from us while too little attention is paid to who we actually are and what we are capable of.

    I always end up returning to these questions: who we actually are, what we are capable of, how diverse and unified we can be at the same time?

    I sometimes realize that some people think that, at least, the outfit of good and nice does not suit them. Where is this perception or belief rooted? Why does “not being good and nice” become one’s persona?

    I came to realize that I do not take revenge simply because I am a proportionally self-centered person. This came from questioning myself: why did I not find dealing with that person worthy of my time?

    This attitude is something good and nice, actually. You choose not to get involved in the journey of someone who chooses not to be good and nice. It requires less effort spent on others, more respect for yourself. Kind of energy saving, on your own terms.

    This is where I invite “self-centrism” to the stage — not to create the good in me, but to help me sustain it.

    Serving good and nice, or abstaining from bad and harmful, may require a healthy self-centered mechanism rather than a holy essence in one.

    Sometimes all is that simple.

    I think we do not have to dive into the romantic set of thought of “carrying a good essence” if you feel this is not the situation for you. You are a human being, very unique and similar in a lot of ways.

    Sometimes serving something positive does not denote anything glorious at all. It does not prove that you carry some kind of holy essence.

    It is never about lacking the capacity to do harm. It is more about having that capacity and choosing not to use it — choosing not to do harm and doing the right thing.

    Following our impulses is one possibility. Choosing something that requires more from us is another.

    Maybe the key is facing our primitive core and seeing what good and nice our advanced core can achieve with it.

    It may be as simple as that. If you dare to face whatever pulls you by the arm along the way.

    Artwork: One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Wang Ximeng

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  • Who Said Life Is Not Linear?

    Who Said Life Is Not Linear?

    Who has the ruler and decides the geometrical shape of our paths? What does it even mean, seriously?

    Your life is not meant to be linear. So, is this the new way to feel “extraordinary”, “different”, or maybe “special”?

    What makes a life linear, first of all? Society’s stigmatic life cycle — be born, grow up, start studying, complete your studies, find a job, find a spouse, have some babies, raise your offspring, retire, and die?

    Is life considered some kind of Jenga game, where pulling out or skipping one piece makes the whole structure collapse, leaving you to say, “Well, my life is not meant to be linear”?

    Why do we need to fit our lives into these kinds of indicators? Does it really help us understand who we truly are and what we are supposed to do here? Or is it all about the linearity surrounding this so-called non-linearity?

    In my life, I have had the chance and privilege to learn “not to compare” at a very young age, thanks to my parents’ occupations, my hometown, and my field.

    I was born in a city completely different from my home culture. I spent some of my teenage years in a kind of “foreign” environment, and I experienced my young adulthood in yet another place, with a different climate from where I started.

    I have been lucky enough to be found worthy of being invited to what I consider one of the most sacred places: people’s dinner tables.

    I have been lucky enough to enjoy warm soup from an antique silver-carved spoon, to experience mashed potatoes and beef from a Dutch-style porcelain plate, or to try some kind of wonder-kebab around a floor table — and so many other great memories I can still feel and smell even when I am writing about them.

    Why am I conveying all of this here?

    Because these experiences significantly shaped the way I perceive the life we are supposed to lead.

    In our daily lives, we encounter “life is not linear” preaches all the time. But I do not think the matter is about whether “life is linear or not to be”, honestly.

    I somehow see our lives as universes in unique bubbles.

    Aren’t you aware of the fact that even where we are living, the whole culture, the whole set of expectations, the whole diet, and perhaps even whole phenotypes can vary enormously — not even from city to city, but from neighborhood to neighborhood?

    One way or another, we all start from a certain neighborhood and become a citizen of that neighborhood. Then we acquire the mental map of that neighborhood, and our way of navigating those streets may help us fit into other neighborhoods, other bubbles, other universes. What works in one bubble may mean nothing in another bubble.

    I think we should put our thinking cap on and consider where we started, who we encountered, what kind of mental map we needed to come this far, what our expectations are, who we would like to be, what we consider normal and abnormal, and what we want to see when we look in the mirror.

    We and our lives should not be reduced to suppositions, or to something to be measured with a ruler. I do not think we should compare our life paths according to the most basic concepts.

    There may be more than that. There may be less than that.

    In my opinion, there is no right or wrong in it.

    We were not given a prescription and placed it into our hands when we were born. But we learn to hold a pen and paper and create something meaningful, or just useful, on it. Maybe, in this way, we learn to draw our own mental map of where we are and where we are heading.

    This may be as simple as that. Or this may be as complex as that.

    Who or what is the measurement here?

    You?

    Expectations?

    Dogmas?

    Stigmas?

    Diplomas?

    Designer clothes in your basement?

    Signed football shirts?

    A few thousand followers?

    What could or could not be?

    There is a lot to think about.

    Sometimes I feel like, “I understand what I am supposed to be.” This sudden enlightenment gives me great resilience at first. Then I start feeling the weight of it on my shoulders, as I recall how many times I have had to bury a “previous” version of myself and give birth to a “novel” version of myself.

    I start thinking: how many funerals of mine have I had to participate in so far? Where are the souls and bodies? Where are the emotions of them?

    What did this acceptance and realization cost me — even which version of me was the subject here?

    Would I still carry the very essence of each of them? Are they even them or me? Or would I carry the whole person they created, essence by essence?

    What would I be then?

    A patchwork?

    Or a concentration of all the versions, of all the essences of myself?

    So, when I try to understand my life path and mission, it has all been the color gray and the smell of fume for me.

    Then I felt like there was something wrong with this dullness. Although the scene before my eyes was very serene, the metamorphosis I was going through did not feel this serene at all. So, I tried to learn to focus on the very present instead of mourning for the ghosts of my previous selves, because what else could be more logical?

    To be able to understand and create the scene of my past, I needed to understand what I was at that very moment. The more I focused on the present, the less gray started appearing before my eyes. This was kind of a miracle for me, as I had stuck myself between “what happened?”, “what will happen?”, and “what could happen between them?”

    Instead of a cemetery, the image changes into a garden inside my mind. I was not a regular visitor of that cemetery, but the gardener of those beautiful, partly thorny plants. I was both passive and active. I was both resting and working hard. I could shine just by staying as myself in my own soil and pot. The grays started to shine as the color of the petals of my plants, and from then on, I started smelling something woody, too.

    Looking back, I realize that I had been seeing the time between one version of myself and the next as a funeral reception. It turns out, all that was happening was that the seeds I had planted were growing. The seeds were actually an acceptance that I could not control anything and everything, and that something would happen despite or thanks to my efforts.

    Where are we now?

    A cemetery?

    A garden?

    A change of perspective?

    Mars?

    Something gray?

    A pool, maybe?

    Maybe nowhere and just void.

    I have come to believe that, even though we are far from truly understanding or accepting our mission, the “shape” of our path is actually whatever exists between our past and future.

    The very present.

    What comes to our minds, what appears before our eyes, what resonates in our ears, what smells before our nose, what gives us goosebumps, what gives us the feature we are most proud of, what puts distance between us and the version of ourselves we were not very fond of, honestly.

    And so on.

    Artwork: The Birthday, Marc Chagall

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  • Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously

    Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously

    Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. 

    Wise words by Noam Chomsky? Maybe not exactly. But I wonder what has sparked before your eyes and inside your mind when you first bump into this sentence.

    Can something be both colorless and green at the same time? Can something sleep, and do so furiously? Can all of these qualities possibly be attributed to “ideas”?

    With this sentence, you have actually just encountered a flagship of the field of syntax in linguistics. Noam Chomsky used this phrase to demonstrate that a sentence can be perfectly correct in its grammar while making little or no logical sense at all. However, I have always found myself thinking about it beyond its syntactic purpose.

    More or less, we expect everything we do or encounter to carry some degree of logical and structural coherence. We tend to look for things that fit together, make sense, and belong together. We tend to consider things that fit into our ready-made intellectual systems more legitimate, often without questioning them too much.

    But perhaps coherence does not always have to mean similarity or consistency. As this sentence suggests, something can contain apparent ambiguity, opposition, or even contradiction, and still form a whole of its own.

    Maybe this is what has always intrigued me about it. Colorless and green seem to cancel each other out. Sleep and furiously do not seem to belong to the same action. And yet, put them together, and we recognize a sentence. Not a traditionally sensible one, perhaps, but a sentence nonetheless. The contradictions do not prevent the words from forming something whole.

    That made me think about how often we expect the things around us to be compatible before we allow them to belong together. We like our ideas to be coherent, our arguments to be well-structured, our choices to make sense. We polish them, arrange them, and make sure nothing seems out of place. Maybe because we carry the silent conscious fear of being undermined or criticized for our self-expression.

    But does something really become more meaningful simply because all its pieces agree with one another?

    And on the other hand, does something become less meaningful when they do not? Who, or what, decides the extent of meaningfulness? At what point does something become absolute nonsense?

    An idea does not necessarily have to dress in haute couture, wear expensive perfume, and present itself impeccably to be valuable. It may arrive a little untidy. It may contradict itself somewhere along the way. It may not know exactly how to introduce itself, or fit neatly into the structure we were expecting. That does not necessarily make what it carries any less worth considering.

    I find myself going back and forth between these two thoughts without knowing where one ends and the other begins.

    We seem to have a strong preference for things that match. We call them coherent, consistent, logical. We often treat these qualities almost as proof that something belongs together.

    But Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously does something rather odd with that expectation. Its elements contradict one another, and yet the contradiction does not destroy the whole. It is, in a way, precisely what makes the sentence what it is.

    So, I start wondering whether we sometimes mistake agreement for coherence.

    Whether things really need to resemble one another, support one another, or even make sense beside one another in order to form something meaningful.

    I don’t know if they do.

    The more I think about it, the more this starts to feel a little like asking whether the chicken came before the egg. If I insist on finding which one comes first, I am already assuming that there has to be a first one.

    Perhaps I am doing something similar here, trying to decide what makes a whole coherent when the very things that make it up may not have much in common at all.

    And maybe that is why I keep coming back to this sentence occasionally.

    Not because it makes sense, or nonsense. Quite the opposite.

    It doesn’t, and yet it holds together.

    It reminds me, sometimes, that perhaps we can allow something to exist without putting too much pressure on ourselves to attribute some grand, almost biblical meaning to it. What seems to neutralize or diminish meaning when placed together may, in fact, create an unexpected harmony that jiggles a corner of our minds.

    Sometimes a structure is enough. Sometimes an ambiguity is enough. Sometimes none of it is enough. Or sometimes everything is enough.

    What decides what, anyway?

    Maybe we sometimes feel unsatisfied because we do not dare to create our own colorless green ideas. We dismiss the possibility that it is up to us to decide that our ideas can sleep in a furious way.

    I don’t know.

    It seems to me that we are too invested in labeling everything, even our way of thinking. We want to know where something belongs before allowing ourselves to see what it might become. We keep trying to place things inside familiar structures, stuffing them with what we already recognize as consistent ideas.

    But perhaps the interesting part is what happens when something does not quite fit.

    It may be, for you, a serene uproar, dull neon yellow, a stupid genius idea, the silent conscious fear I mentioned above, or maybe sweet-chili sauce. The last one does not contradict itself in your mind because, in some cultures, people dared to put those things together and it worked out perfectly fine.

    I think one way or another, everyone has a system, a structure of their own. But we may miss the plot twist by focusing too much on filling that structure with what we already know as consistent.

    Maybe we just need to let our ideas flow without constantly considering whether they carry some universal meaning. And perhaps we should ask: meaning according to what, or whom?

    At some point, especially when we are trying to know ourselves or create a space that reflects us, we may need to become our own first expert.

    Whatever we do or intend to create does not necessarily have to produce a “universal for others” outcome. It may be applauded, but perhaps part of that applause comes simply from our senses becoming accustomed to it. We grow familiar with certain forms, certain structures, certain ways of making sense.

    I think sometimes we should question the universe inside us, and the universality we keep trying to produce from it.

    Maybe your universe wants to do something not out of the box, but in the corner of the box. Or even in front of the box.

    There is something comforting in the idea that not everything has to become a universally recognizable shape before it is allowed to exist.

    I believe it is important to let something exist just for our own sake. And colorless green ideas show that perhaps it can take only one sentence to achieve that.

    We should allow ourselves to be, simply for the sake of being. To exist without immediately asking what that existence is supposed to mean.

    There must be more than coherence, biblical meaning, and flawless construction in what we aim to give life to, utter, create, or simply let rest inside a corner of our mind.

    Anything and everything is fine. What matters most, perhaps, is to pull up a chair for yourself without being too busy with universal expectations.

    There must be more than outer universality.

    We should not give up discovering the universe we carry simply by existing. Respecting that “self-universality” may eventually let us decorate the corners of that box. Maybe there will be no box in the future, but a circle, a hexagon, or something we have not named yet.

    And perhaps it is not “who knows?” anymore, but “who decides to do that?”

    There is something oddly satisfying about that contradiction. It makes me wonder how many things we might be trying too hard to make fit, simply because we have learned to associate harmony with agreement.

    Maybe they can contradict each other and still belong to the same whole.

    Maybe we do not always need to resolve the contradiction for the whole to remain intact.

    Or maybe I am just giving a rather elaborate meaning to a sentence about colorless green ideas sleeping furiously.

    I suppose I don’t mind either way.

    Colorless green ideas can sleep furiously, or even furiously green ideas can sleep colorlessly.

    So, what about your ideas? Would you bring green and colorless together? Would you let something sleep furiously?

    Up to you.

    Artwork: Aurora Borealis, Frederic Edwin Church

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  • The Unbearable Lightness of Uncertainty

    The Unbearable Lightness of Uncertainty

    What would it be like to enter this world with your life already drawn for you, inch by inch?

    Some people seem to be born into a story that has already been written. Long before they can choose anything for themselves, their place in the world is almost outlined for them: what they will become, what they will inherit, what they will be expected to achieve. Perhaps they are handed influence, privilege, or power, but perhaps the greatest privilege of all is the certainty of knowing that they are meant to become something.

    And then there are those who arrive without such a map.

    Have you ever heard of the journey of caretta carettas, or loggerhead sea turtles?

    After an incubation period of approximately sixty days, hatchlings break through their shells using a temporary egg-tooth. There is no one waiting to guide them, no path laid out for them to follow. They emerge by relying on their sensory cues, making their way out of the nest and eventually towards the open ocean, completely on their own.

    Even the timing of their emergence is shaped by uncertainty. During the day, the heat of the sand can act as a thermal inhibitor, keeping them beneath the surface. As the sand cools at night, the change in temperature signals that it is safer to emerge. They do not know what awaits them beyond the nest. They simply respond to what they can sense.

    And perhaps this is where uncertainty begins to look a little different.

    It is easy to think of uncertainty as the absence of something: the absence of a plan, a guarantee, a destination. But what if it is also the space in which we learn to navigate? What if not knowing exactly who we are going to become is not a weakness, but one of the things that keeps possibility alive?

    A caretta caretta does not emerge from the sand knowing what kind of life it will have. It has no promise of safety, no certainty of survival, no one telling it where it belongs. It has, for a moment, little more than its body, its senses, and the sand beneath it.

    And somehow, that is enough to begin.

    I see uncertainty as a form of freedom, honestly. And I only came to see it this way relatively recently.

    I have always been an ambitious person, but my ambition was mostly directed towards academic and educational pursuits. I was raised by overly affectionate parents, under a very peaceful roof, with plenty of everything I could have wanted. And yet there was one thing I always felt I could not get enough of from my parents: an answer to the question, What could I become?

    Whenever I brought up this question, the answer I received was always the same: You can be anything and everything you want, and we will support you.

    When I was younger, this lack of direction drove me crazy. I wanted to be navigated towards something. I wanted a field, a destination, a sign telling me where I belonged. In my mind, I was living in a story in which I was lacking a sense of belonging. I was all alone. I was one of those caretta carettas.

    Now, as a young adult, I am more than grateful for the uncertainty my parents gave me.

    Thanks to this uncertainty, my dreams are still vivid and fluid. I can still be anything and everything, or nothing.

    I realized that this kind of uncertainty serves as fuel: a reason to remain willing to exist, to explore, to change direction, to become someone I have not yet imagined.

    This uncertainty opened up a lifelong journey in which I carry the sweet possibility of wearing any hat—or perhaps never finding a hat that fits me at all. Anything possible or everything impossible. This is not even the issue.

    Sometimes I feel like I am inside an arthouse film whose ending has deliberately been left open.

    And perhaps uncertainty is what makes me wonder: Is that film an absolute expression of me, or am I simply part of a story that was never meant to be carefully plotted? According to whom am I the director? According to whom am I a side character? According to whom am I the starring actress?

    In the hands of uncertainty, I can create a thousand questions and give a thousand different answers. Maybe all of them are correct. Maybe all of them are wrong.

    Maybe that is precisely the point.

    Uncertainty does not simply take certainty away from us. Paradoxically, it makes us more aware of the certainties we already carry.

    For a caretta caretta, there is the shell, its sensory cues, its instinct to move towards the sea. For us, perhaps, there is something less tangible but no less real: our essence, our stance, our will.

    When there is no map, we begin to notice what we already have.

    I see the uncertainties we wish to be certainties as our little fairies, constantly nudging us to find our own path.

    Maybe this is what uncertainty ultimately gives us. Not the certainty of knowing where we are going, but the certainty of knowing that we can navigate. Not a promise of who we will become, but the freedom to discover it. 

    To stop fighting the windmills. To have no idea who you are going to be, while slowly realizing that you already carry everything you need to begin. 

    This is the unbearable lightness of uncertainty.

    Artworks: 1Among the Waves, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky
    2Azure Grotto. Naples, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky

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  • It Is a Good Idea to Read Children’s Books

    It Is a Good Idea to Read Children’s Books

    Whenever I visit a bookstore, my first approach is always towards the children’s books shelf. I have a habit of collecting books for the children around me, and I often give children’s books as presents to people who have started learning a new language.

    There is a certain peace at that shelf.

    For a long time, I could not quite explain why I kept returning to it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking, “One day, I will write about this.” Then, a few days ago, at a completely unrelated shelf in a bookstore, I came across Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell. I immediately took it as a sign that this might be my next topic.

    I am glad that bookshelves speak to me in their own ways.

    We generally talk about “children” as if we were never there before. What made us so distant from the reality of being children ourselves? Is it simply because the Earth completed a few more rotations around the Sun and we decided that this was enough reason to cut our ties with that part of ourselves?

    Rundell writes about the way we move through books. First, we read Spot the Dog, then Peter and Jane, then Narnia, then young adult novels, and eventually “graduate” into adult literature. Somewhere along the way, many of us begin to treat returning to children’s books as a step backwards, as if looking back meant losing status.

    I find that idea fascinating because it feels so familiar.

    We often speak about reading as a journey of advancement, but I am not sure that returning to a children’s book is a retreat. Sometimes it feels more like returning to a place where things are still close to their core.

    That is what children’s books have always been for me: a portal back to the core.

    Not necessarily to a particular childhood memory, but to something more fundamental. A reminder that anything and everything can be simple, yet touching and meaningful.

    We feel happy. We feel exhausted. We experience grief. We experience jealousy. Sometimes we struggle to accept our physical features. Sometimes we simply want to be understood.

    These things have always existed, and they always will.

    They are some of the core experiences of being human.

    Think about a place you have visited as an adult. Think about a goal you achieved, or something you wanted very much but could never quite make work.

    When you read a children’s book about such a thing, do you remember the wind of that place against your face? Do you remember the humidity settling on your skin? Do you remember what you felt when you first set your sights on the thing you eventually achieved, and what achieving it actually made you feel?

    Or think about something that simply would not work, no matter how hard you tried. Have you ever allowed yourself to admit that perhaps the wisdom created by that experience has become part of you?

    This is where I see children’s books as a portal to awareness. They can take something we have already lived through as adults and bring us back to its simplest, most tangible core. They remind us not only of what happened, but of what it felt like to be there.

    There are simple yet profound answers to many of these experiences in the language of children’s books. Yes, we are capable of more complex reasoning now, and of course we should enjoy our cognitive abilities. Growing older allows us to analyze, compare, question and connect ideas in ways that we could not as children.

    But sometimes there is a particular joy in thinking and feeling plainly, without too much crowd around a thought.

    Children’s books often remind me of that.

    My own safe place was Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies. I still remember the sound of water I heard in those illustrations. And perhaps I never completely left that world behind; I can still take great pleasure in leaving the water behind and having pancakes with Pippi Longstocking.

    Looking back, I find it remarkable that a few drawings on a page could create such a vivid sensation. Yet that is precisely the kind of magic children’s books seem to carry. They allow us to experience ideas, emotions and entire worlds before we have learned to explain them.

    I also visit the children’s shelf regularly to see what is happening in the childhoods of other cultures.

    What do children feel? What do they like to spread on their bread? What do they find funny? What are they curious about? What kinds of friendships, families and adventures fill their stories? Do they wear socks all summer, or run barefoot into the sea? Which questions are adults choosing to place into their hands?

    Those children will become teenagers, young adults and eventually adults in only a few years.

    There is something strangely emotional about that thought.

    The illustrations and stories I encounter today may offer a small glimpse into the future generation of people I will one day meet. In that sense, children’s books are not only windows into childhood; they are also small maps of the generations that are still growing.

    When you pick up a children’s book, you stand somewhere between the child you once were, the adult you have become, and the generation that comes after you.

    Perhaps that is another reason I find that shelf so peaceful.

    Of course, not every children’s book is profound. When people hear “children’s literature,” they may think of colorful dinosaur series jumping through sand dunes or other books that exist simply to entertain. And that is perfectly fine. Not every book needs to contain a grand lesson about the human condition.

    Yet even those books tell us something. They become part of a generation’s shared references, shared jokes and shared memories. They, too, contribute to the cultural inheritance that children carry with them into adulthood.

    The dynamics of life may seem complex, but so much of life begins with the simple depictions we find in children’s books. Not only emotions, but also philosophers, planets, master composers, basic physics and countless other subjects. Children’s books rarely offer the final word on these things. Instead, they offer something perhaps more important:

    A beginning. A foundation.

    They introduce children to ideas before those ideas become academic subjects, professional interests or lifelong passions. They help children name feelings before those feelings become difficult to carry. They offer companions in the form of characters who are frightened, curious, lonely, brave, confused or hopeful.

    In that sense, children’s books are already helping to build the foundations of healthy adulthood.

    Perhaps that is why I find myself thinking not only about reading children’s books, but also about making sure that children can reach them. If these books are such meaningful portals, perhaps one of the simplest things we can do as adults is to help keep that portal open. We can give books as gifts, share our favorites, and support the local libraries that quietly place entire worlds within a child’s reach.

    The dynamics of life become increasingly complicated as we grow older. Yet underneath that complexity, many things remain surprisingly simple.

    As in fairy tales, if there is fear, there is courage; if there is hardship, there is determination; if there is hunger, there is a way to satisfy it. But perhaps it is not the opposite poles of these experiences that matter most, but what happens in between — and where we decide to stand in the end.

    The child reading that book wants to understand and to be understood. They want to belong. They are curious about the world around them. They search for meaning. They search for connection. So do you, adult. The core has never changed.

    Children’s books do not necessarily bring us back to childhood. Our adulthood is, in many ways, already an extension of that childhood.

    I believe they simply bring us a little closer to the core of what it means to be human.

    And perhaps that is why, whenever I walk into a bookstore, I still find myself returning to that shelf.

    Artwork: Katjesspel, Henriëtte Ronner-Knip

    2 responses to “It Is a Good Idea to Read Children’s Books”

    1. theharlequinheart Avatar
      theharlequinheart

      I recently re-read ‘Danny the Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl. I first read it when I was nine. I was part of the upper-reading book club in primary school (the top group – there were four of us and we had a reading table all to ourselves). Upon reading it, I was instantly transport back into both the warmth I had felt reading it, and the experience of being amongst that top group. It felt wonderful, but with it came a certain sadness that I’ll never get to experience that childlike wonder of a book – though as an adult, we appreciate it in different ways.

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      1. betweeneverywhereandnowhere Avatar
        betweeneverywhereandnowhere

        Thank you for inviting me to the table of your book club in primary school, and for letting me meet the adult version of that child 🙂 I think that “sadness” may be one of the powerful seeds that allows you to transport yourself back to that reading table. I think that is beautiful.

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  • I Used My Natal Chart…

    I Used My Natal Chart…

    …To Better Understand My Life Path

    I think anything and everything can be a means of understanding our minds, our lives, the dynamics surrounding us, and so on.

    As I mentioned before, I have been interested in astrology for some time now. Honestly, I do not take astrology as fortune-telling or a way of predicting the future. I rather see it as a way of attributing some meaning retrospectively — a different lens through which I can look at my own life.

    In order to better understand what my existence might mean to me, I decided to take my natal chart into account. Of course, none of this is science-backed or concrete. Still, there is something fascinating — even a little fluttering — about the thought that the universe, the planets, and their mathematical relationships might have left some kind of imprint at the very moment you started breathing in this world.

    It may mean something. Or it may mean nothing.

    But I find it interesting to look at it anyway.

    Honestly, my natal chart seems to have received quite a generous share of oppositions and squares — the so-called challenging aspects — rather than conjunctions, trines, and sextiles, which are generally considered more harmonious. It is often said that having more harmonious aspects may indicate that life flows more easily.

    Apparently, I was not given the smoothest possible version of the tutorial.

    Sun Square Saturn

    This is one of the most prominent aspects of my natal chart.

    While the Sun represents core identity, self-expression, authority, and, traditionally, the father, Saturn is associated with restrictions, delays, responsibility, maturity, and limitations. When they form a square, no wonder it is considered a difficult aspect.

    I have even come across a few places saying something along the lines of, “We feel very sorry when we see this aspect in a woman’s chart.” One can easily be convinced that this aspect means lower self-esteem, hardships in life, delays in self-realization, problems with authority, even difficulties involving one’s father, and so on.

    But I think there is something easily underestimated here.

    If you were born under this aspect, and if Sun Square Saturn is one of the main themes of your life, then never forget that you are a Sun Square Saturn, too.

    You develop endurance because your life requires it. You become patient because things take time. You learn to think strategically because not everything can be forced.

    And once you realize and accept that this is simply one of the ways your life tends to unfold, you stop spending so much energy asking, “Why me?”. Instead, you start moving forward consciously, knowing what you are dealing with.

    Here is the perk of a difficult aspect: not an easy life, but a stronger self. And a stronger self knows how to appreciate what it has achieved.

    You know how much effort, patience, and intention went into it. You appreciate it more consciously and more maturely, because you know exactly what it took to get there.

    And what you build may stay with you longer, simply because you were an active and conscious part of building it.

    Moon Opposition Mercury-Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune

    My Cancer Moon forms oppositions to all of the planets I mentioned above in Capricorn, with the exception of my Aquarius Uranus.

    This opposition is also considered one of the more challenging configurations, as it creates a tension between the Cancer-Capricorn axis.

    According to astrology, my life would always be somewhat of a rollercoaster between my emotional and material needs.

    And honestly, my emotional side can be in turbulence almost all the time.

    Yet, I am still grateful for the tension this aspect represents.

    First of all, I know and respect my feelings.

    I know how my body and mind tend to react to a certain feeling. I have learned to recognize my emotional surges. I am learning when to simply feel and when to step back and think.

    I have learned to get to know both my mind and my emotional side because of this turbulence.

    Maybe Saturn saved me with its trine in this case. Who knows?

    The more I read about astrology and think about life paths, the more I realize that perhaps everything we go through can somehow navigate us towards what we are supposed to do.

    From an astrological perspective, the North Node is said to give us clues about our journey in this lifetime.

    North Node in Libra in the 5th House

    The more I looked into my chart, the more I became interested in the idea of the North Node.

    Mine is in Libra, a sign associated with harmony, diplomacy, justice, partnership, and balance. It is also in the 5th house, traditionally associated with pleasure, joy, creativity, art, self-expression, and the things we do simply because they make us feel alive.

    So perhaps all the turbulence I mentioned above is also leading me somewhere very different from where I might instinctively go.

    Perhaps I am meant to learn to express myself without putting pressure on myself to be flawless.

    To deliberately choose the lightness of life. To enjoy art and music.

    To spend time with people and build meaningful bonds. To allow myself to experience pleasure without feeling that I first have to earn it.

    And maybe, most importantly, to understand that life does not always have to be a problem that needs solving.

    But what did my chart give me to work with in order to get there, apart from all the rollercoaster rides?

    Jupiter Conjunction Mercury & My Gemini Ascendant

    When I retrospectively analyze my natal chart, I like to think that this aspect points towards one small corner of the direction suggested by my North Node.

    Jupiter conjunct Mercury is said to be associated with an interest in writing, a love of learning, curiosity, broad thinking, problem-solving, and many other things that I happen to enjoy.

    My Gemini Ascendant seems to reinforce the same theme. Gemini is associated with curiosity, communication, collecting information, making connections between ideas, and, naturally, words.

    So maybe the universe did not necessarily want me to have an easy life.

    Maybe it wanted me to exist among all the crises while feeding my brain, trying to understand who I truly am, and sharing what I think — even if what I think is not exactly rocket science.

    Perhaps this is why writing feels less like a separate activity and more like one of the ways I make sense of all of it.

    And Apparently, I Have the Potential to Be an Alchemist

    There is another interpretation of my chart that I find particularly amusing.

    When the aspects in my chart are interpreted as a whole, I am said to have the potential of an alchemist — someone who can transform difficulties into something meaningful, turning the heavier experiences of life into something valuable.

    I have to admit; I am not quite there yet. I am still in the phase of turning my life experiences into panic attacks rather than alchemy.

    Apparently, I still have some work to do.

    I am still learning how to navigate my difficult moments. I am still figuring out what certain experiences are trying to teach me, and sometimes I am simply trying to get through them.

    Maybe that is also part of the process.

    Perhaps we do not always have to become as impressive as our supposed potential suggests.

    Maybe not being the “alchemist”, our chart promises us to be just yet is also a way of flowing with life.

    Maybe we are allowed to be ordinary while becoming who we are supposed to become.

    Maybe This Is What the Chart Is For

    Life — or simply the dynamics around us — makes us face a lot of challenges.

    I do not think squares and oppositions have to be interpreted as punishments, just as I do not think trines and sextiles are guarantees of an easy life.

    Perhaps they can simply be ways of looking at the things we repeatedly encounter in ourselves.

    The point, for me, is not whether my natal chart actually predicted my life. It probably did not.

    The point is that looking at it made me notice things I had already experienced but had never put into words.

    It made me look at my difficulties from a little distance.

    It made me think about what they have taught me, what they have taken from me, and, perhaps more importantly, what they have given me.

    Perhaps, in this lifetime, we are meant to learn when to be selective like Saturn — to practice Schopenhauer’s hedgehog dilemma, finding a distance where we are close enough to form a warm circle, but far enough not to reach each other’s spines. Perhaps Saturn’s rings remind us that stability does not always mean keeping the world away, but having enough gravity to decide what becomes part of our orbit.

    Perhaps we are meant to become aware of our power like the Sun — of the fact that the same force that nourishes can also burn — and learn to shape that power through our will and reason.

    Perhaps we are meant to learn from the Moon that nurturing does not mean having no boundaries. That we can care deeply for others while still protecting the parts of ourselves that need protection.

    Perhaps we are meant to become mature enough, like Jupiter, to decide what deserves to grow.

    Because not everything we encounter needs to be expanded.

    Not every thought needs more attention, not every desire needs to become a pursuit, and not every possibility needs to become a reality.

    Maybe that is what all these symbols are ultimately pointing towards: not becoming someone who has mastered every aspect of life, but becoming someone who knows what to do with what the flow has given them.

    Maybe we are not meant to get rid of all those sharp corners in our charts, but to smooth them out until we create our own version of a harmonious flow.

    Maybe we are meant to look at our squares and oppositions as aesthetic objects, move through them, and use them as portals to a more mature version of ourselves.

    Or maybe we are simply meant to find our conjunctions and sextiles without constantly bumping into the corners of our squares and bruising ourselves along the way.

    Maybe we are allowed to decide what it all means.

    Maybe what we want is exactly what is supposed to happen.

    Or maybe even thinking that way is part of the plan.

    Who knows?

    Note: If you are interested in the symbolic and romantic meanings attached to the planets, you might also want to listen to Gustav Holst’s The Planets. It is a completely different way of imagining the planets. Another way of hearing the harmony in all of this.

    Artwork: Vid insjön. Motiv från Balingsta, Oscar Björck

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  • All It Takes Is a Piece of Art

    All It Takes Is a Piece of Art

    I have come across La Grenouillère by Pierre-Auguste Renoir many times before. Recently, I found myself returning to it once again.

    Every time I encounter it, a different detail seems to call for my attention. Yet each encounter reveals something even more interesting: I am no longer the same person who stood before it the last time.

    The painting itself has never changed. I have.

    Sometimes, all it takes is a piece of art.

    But then again, what is a piece of art, anyway?

    Is it a classical painting hanging in a museum? A musical composition? A novel? A flower you planted in your garden? A journal filled with your own thoughts? Or perhaps even a phonk track that unexpectedly speaks to you on an ordinary afternoon?

    Maybe art is simply whatever awakens something within you.

    Whatever makes you pause for a moment, fuels your energy for the day, or quietly catches your attention and asks you to look a little closer.

    I often think that art reveals itself in far more places than we usually allow it to. Why did that particular song catch your ear? Why does that brand appeal to your taste? Why did you choose that print for your wall instead of countless others? What made you plant that particular flower?

    Those choices may seem insignificant, but they are rarely random.

    And perhaps spending time with our tastes is one of the simplest ways to get to know ourselves. Not because our preferences define us completely, but because they leave small clues behind. They reveal what draws us in, what comforts us, what we long for, and what we instinctively notice before anything else.

    In the rush of everyday life, many of these choices become automatic. We consume, choose, scroll, decorate, listen, and move on without ever asking ourselves why.

    But what if we did ask?

    What if we paid a little more attention to the things that consistently catch our eye?

    For me, looking at La Grenouillère this time felt strangely similar to opening an old journal and realizing how quietly my identity has evolved over the years.

    The first time I truly paid attention to the painting, my eyes were drawn to the crowd. I could almost hear the conversations, the movement on the bridge, the liveliness—perhaps even an unrefined rush—of people making their way home.

    This time, however, I noticed something entirely different.

    I heard the gentle movement of the water. I noticed the small boats floating peacefully.

    Instead of the noise of the crowd, I imagined the quiet humming that might have existed within each person. I could almost smell the mossy air surrounding the river. Rather than focusing on the people themselves, I found myself absorbed by the serenity holding the entire scene together.

    The painting had not changed. The story I found within it had.

    Whenever I read analyses of La Grenouillère, they often describe something entirely different from what it awakens in me. And perhaps that is exactly the point.

    I am less interested in discovering what Renoir intended than in understanding what the painting reveals about me.

    Art, to me, has never been about finding the correct interpretation. It is about witnessing the quiet dialogue between the artwork and the person standing before it.

    And this may be why some forms of art feel distant or even cold to us. Not because they lack meaning, but because they are speaking a language that is not ours. They still move someone, inspire someone, or reveal something to someone. They simply may not be speaking to us—or at least not to the version of us standing before them today.

    And this may be where many people lose their connection with art. We often assume that art must look a certain way, belong in certain places, or require a particular kind of knowledge to be appreciated. But art does not have to hang in a museum to be art.

    The issue may not be that we do not understand art. Perhaps we simply have not yet discovered the forms of it that speak to us.

    Nowadays, we constantly feel the urge to produce, to be seen, to improve ourselves, to turn every experience into something useful. We often approach the world expecting every book, conversation, trip, or hobby to teach us something immediately.

    But how often do we simply allow ourselves to experience something?

    To pause. To notice. To absorb.

    To let something exist for the simple experience of being present, of feeling alive, of meeting ourselves where we are.

    Perhaps that is why paying attention to what we call art matters. Not because art will tell us who we are, but because it often shows us where our attention naturally goes.

    Perhaps that is why art keeps finding us.

    Not because it changes. But because we do.

    To relax, to realize, to pause, to awaken our senses, to quiet the talkative fairies in our heads, to meet ourselves—sometimes, all it takes is a piece of art.

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  • What I Read, What I Become

    What I Read, What I Become

    How do you choose a book? How do you see it?

    Or perhaps a better question is this: what makes something worthy of becoming a book in the first place? Is it the story, the ideas, the language, or simply the possibility that someone else’s mind might resonate with ours?

    I have come to believe that the books we choose reveal where we stand at a particular stage of our lives.

    Most of the time, I gravitate towards books that challenge me—books that introduce unfamiliar ways of thinking and quietly stretch the limits of my understanding. Yet there are periods when I feel isolated, when I crave belonging more than intellectual stimulation. During those times, I find myself reaching for books that everyone else seems to be reading. Not because they are necessarily better, but because reading them allows me to participate in a shared conversation. Even a brief conversation in front of a bookshelf can satisfy that deeply human desire to belong, if only for a little while, to the same imagined world.

    Which brings me to another question.

    How should one read a book?

    I have taken courses on reading and literary analysis. I have written academic papers and learned countless methods for approaching a text. They all have their value. However, perhaps I had become a little spoiled by knowing those rules that I eventually felt the need to place them quietly in the background. I wanted to discover my own way of reading rather than constantly measuring myself against established criteria.

    During the years when I was choosing my university major, several people encouraged me to study literature instead of translation studies. I always found myself resisting that advice. It was never because I lacked respect for literature—quite the opposite. I was simply more fascinated by the destination than by the journey. I was interested in the work that finally emerged rather than in every step that had led the writer there.

    What fascinated me was never how a book came into existence, but what happened after it reached the reader. Because from that moment on, the journey no longer belonged solely to the writer. It belonged to me.

    Reading became a way of observing not only the book, but also myself. The books I returned to, the ideas I resisted, the characters I admired or quietly disagreed with—all of them became subtle ways of understanding who I was becoming. Books have always felt like some of the safest companions in that process.

    This approach may be wrong. It may be right. Or it may even be disrespectful.

    Or it may even be exactly what many writers secretly hope for.

    I have never read a book primarily to study its author. I read it for the universe it opens before me and for the candle it manages to light somewhere in my mind. Only after wandering through that universe that I begin to wonder about the person who created it—not the other way around. I have always enjoyed the ultimate stance of “art for people’s sake”.

    Reading, for me, has never been passive. Every book eventually becomes a conversation.

    Sometimes I imagine a different setting that feels more convincing to me. Sometimes I reshape the characters’ appearances according to my own imagination. If a detail is essential to the story, I do not erase it; I simply let my imagination bend around it until it finds room for both the author’s intention and my own.

    Is that a betrayal of the book? Or is that precisely what literature is meant to awaken?

    When we stand before a bookshelf, what are we really choosing?

    Another culture or the comfort of our own?

    A challenge to our assumptions or the reassurance of familiar expectations?

    Do we read to learn, to escape, to belong, to witness another life, or simply to rest inside a quieter universe for a while?

    Do we choose books in their original language because we want to hear the author’s own voice? Or do we look first at the translator or the publishing house because we trust the way they carry one world into another?

    Most of us probably never stop to ask ourselves these questions. Our choices often feel instinctive. Yet perhaps those instincts are far from random.

    Perhaps what happens in our minds when we reach for a book reveals more about us than we realize.

    Like a detective studying scattered clues, what if we examined our reading habits with the same curiosity? Could our reading habits become a mirror?

    Reading has never felt like a manual to me. It has always felt like an expedition. And I have come to believe that, on this journey, the only reliable guide is the reader themselves.

    You may lose yourself between the lines. You may feel distant from an idea. You may not understand every word. You may read with your imagination more than with your eyes. You may become frustrated, delighted, or find yourself unable to decide what to think at all.

    None of these are signs that you are reading incorrectly.

    They are signs that, somewhere along the way, the book has begun to touch something uniquely yours.

    Perhaps that is what “how to read a book” has always meant to me.

    Not finding the most efficient method. Not reading according to academic expectations.

    Not proving how intellectually capable we are. But discovering what kind of reader we naturally become.

    The way we read is rarely accidental. It reflects not only who we are, but sometimes who we long to become. The worlds we repeatedly return to may be the ones we quietly seek in our own lives. The stories that comfort us may reveal the shelter we need. Even the books we cannot bring ourselves to finish may tell us something about ourselves. Sometimes, a book simply becomes a temporary refuge in a universe we may never inhabit beyond the page.

    The books that stay with us are rarely the ones we have read “correctly.” They are the ones that reveal something about ourselves—what captures our attention, what unsettles us, what sparks our imagination, and what quietly lights another candle in our minds.

    Knowing how you read a book, in the end, is another way of knowing who you are—or perhaps who you are becoming.

    Because reading has never been merely about understanding books.

    It is about slowly, quietly, and honestly learning to understand ourselves through them.

    Artwork: A Girl in a Pink Dress Reading, Wenzel Tornøe

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  • My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

    My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

    There are certain sentences that feel less like literature and more like recognition. You do not simply read them; you recognize something that has been quietly living within you all along.

    This is how I feel whenever I truly pause at Emily Dickinson’s My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun. Words written by a stranger, perhaps centuries ago, can suddenly become mirrors for thoughts I had never managed to articulate myself.

    My Life Had Stood – a Loaded Gun –.

    The metaphor has stayed with me ever since.

    What if my life has stood like a loaded gun, and every experience I have lived has become another bullet?

    But then another question followed.

    What are these bullets really made of?

    Could words themselves become my bullets in this lifetime?

    Who decides where they are aimed?

    Am I truly capable of deciding what this gun will yield, or am I merely the one carrying it?

    For a long time now, I have been trying not to resist what people often call the flow. Yet before surrendering to an idea, I cannot help questioning it.

    Can we truly persuade ourselves that such a thing exists?

    We speak of flow as though it were self-evident. We encourage one another to trust it, surrender to it, and stop resisting it. Yet if there truly is a flow, why am I being carried into this one and not another? Could its mystery lie in never knowing its direction, its contents, or the story into which it has already placed us?

    Despite these questions, I still believe in free will. I believe in planning, determination, responsibility, and conscious decisions. Yet I cannot ignore that life continually confronts us with boundaries we never chose ourselves: the things that happen, the things that never happen, the opportunities that quietly appear, the ones that disappear despite every effort, and the unexpected situations into which we somehow find ourselves being pulled.

    If there truly is a flow, perhaps we do not simply believe in it—we eventually recognize it through the shape our lives take.

    For as long as I can remember, I have believed that nothing happens in vain.

    And for me, it has never been Why me?

    It has always been Why this?

    Life simply keeps happening to everyone.

    Beautiful things. Painful things.

    Ordinary things. Life-changing things.

    None of them belong exclusively to us.

    What fascinates me is not that these things happen.

    It is how differently they continue to exist after they have happened.

    The very same event may quietly dissolve into one person’s memory while becoming another person’s identity.

    A conversation, a rejection, a delayed train, a city, a diagnosis, a book, a success, or even a stranger encountered only for a brief moment may continue living within someone for years—not because the event itself was extraordinary, but because of the meaning gradually woven around it.

    Perhaps this is also why I have never felt comfortable with how easily we reduce life’s turning points to heartbreak.

    Is that really the case?

    Perhaps we call it heartbreak because every outcome eventually finds its way into the heart. Every ending, every disappointment, every unanswered question seems to leave something behind there.

    But does everyone truly carry life in the heart?

    Or do some carry it somewhere else? Or nowhere at all?

    Perhaps that is another question altogether.

    There are heartbreaks, certainly.

    But along with heartbreaks, there are also mind-breaks.

    Dream-breaks. Ideal-breaks. Identity-breaks.

    And countless quieter fractures that rarely have a name.

    Sometimes what changes us is not the loss of a person, but the loss of an idea. A certainty. A future we had already begun living inside our minds. A version of ourselves that never came into existence.

    Perhaps these are the bullets.

    Not the events themselves, but the meanings we slowly forge from them.

    The bullet is not the rejection, the city, the illness, the book, the success, or the heartbreak. Those belong to life.

    The bullet is what remains after they pass through us—the meaning that quietly settles within us, gradually shaping how we understand ourselves and, eventually, how we move through the world.

    Maybe that is why nothing happens in vain.

    Not because every event carries an objective purpose waiting to be discovered, but because meaning is never entirely contained within the event itself. It comes into existence in the encounter between life and the person living it.

    Perhaps this is also why I have never been interested only in asking what happened.

    I find myself asking a different question nowadays.

    Who did it happen to?

    Because perhaps that is where meaning truly begins.

    The event may be ordinary. The person who carries it never is.

    That ordinary event may eventually become a painting, a piece of writing, a photograph, a melody, a conversation remembered years later, or even a small pin attached to someone’s bag.

    The event belongs to life.

    The meaning gradually becomes part of the person.

    So why am I here, thinking these thoughts and sharing them?

    And why are you here, reading and witnessing my possible bullets?

    Out of all the places in this virtual universe and out of all the words ever written, why would our paths happen to cross here, in this particular moment?

    Maybe there is no answer.

    Or perhaps there never needed to be one.

    Perhaps what we spend a lifetime carrying is not the weight of our experiences, but the meanings we create from them.

    And perhaps what this loaded gun ultimately yields has never depended solely on what happened to us, but on who we became while carrying every bullet.

    Artwork: Expectations, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

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