Do you know yourself well enough to give yourself attention?
There’s a very comfortable place beyond the external validations of the world.
A place that’s always open and functioning, even though it’s not often visited.
It’s a place that rules life in silence and authority, even if it goes unnoticed.
It’s a place that has a frequency, but not many visitors, despite being filled with valuable objects. Often, it’s so vast that the value of these objects is lost.
It has many forms, like decorations, but is practically transparent.
Visiting this place is what we avoid the most. What is your biggest crutch to avoid the visit? How do you use it to justify not going there?
How can you decorate a place you barely know? How can you understand the measurements, the fittings, and the textures if you rarely look at this place?
With so many distractions and indecisions about how you want this place to look, you forget the real function is to enjoythis place: to welcome people, share experiences, and appreciate company.
The decoration is thought out solely for how others will feel comfortable, without considering how they will actually experience the space.
It’s natural for people to arrive, have opinions, and even judge this place. Stay calm.
Focus on which furniture or objects they are truly enjoying. Don’t focus on how they are appreciating (or not) the grandeur of the place. (Envy is simply admiration misunderstood.)
So, let’s take this process step by step, shall we? Let’s go:
– Inhabit the place.
– Choose a corner and observe the place.
– Put yourself in others’ shoes and understand the journey they will take in the place.
– What are the best ways to intensify their contact with all parts of this place?
– What decorations can serve as guides for this intensified experience?
– Choose the furniture, the lights, the pictures.
– Adapt (whenever possible) the place with every new interaction.
– Appreciate all the expressions, touches, curiosity, and interaction people have with this place.
It doesn’t seem so hard. If someone could help me, I’m already thankful in advance.
After all of this, the rest is just the spectacle of life unfolding right before our eyes.
“Observe the place and the people, understand the best way for them to interact with the space, move a few things around, observe the place and the people, understand the be… The never-ending cycle”
The funny thing is that the place itself doesn’t really matter. It’s not the place, or rather, it’s not the composition that truly matters.
It’s the experience of interaction that gives the place its meaning.
And the biggest driver of this place’s existence is the fact that it doesn’t really exist as the same place. It’s like a place of all places.
The balance is equal: not decorating the place and letting the interactions be random, or constantly moving things around to create random interactions. What’s the real difference?
Neither situation has meaning.
What do you understand by “meaning”?
Once again, we come to the true reflection here: What is it like to live in this place? What’s the best way to move things around: dragging, lifting, disassembling? What’s the best way to react to the randomness of interactions in this place?
Freedom is the result of always being able to change everything around. Of being able to see the place with your own, unique, and real vision of it.
One detail (which is hardly a detail) that remains no matter what changes you make: the door to this place is always a mirror, and the place looks a lot like its reflection.
I don’t even know how to talk that much about places, but…
Find this place.
Decorate this place.
Host in this place.
Transform this place.
Just don’t let this place be just a place.
If you hum it with a melody, it might even turn into a song.
Sundays are like that, from place to place.