Making Space

How can we really love people if we are selective of the parts we want to know?

If you think about it but not for too long, you’d realise that we all have our little corners of the world. Where we take a larger piece of life, like a buffet and create an appetizing idea of nourishment.

We have our corners with friends and certain memories we create and share with all sorts of people. Sometimes these corners never intersect, they are as far from each node as possible. That is why at times, it feels as though we live separate lives.

I think that is because each corner we create comes with its own furnishings. The décor also determines the decorum, for some of us, we live organizing randomness, never fully attaching, yet, not fully detached.

It is as I pondered on this phenomenon that I stumbled upon the inspiration that is this post. Making space.

What does this mean?

Imagine you have an overflowing closet, but you’ve just asked your boyfriend to stay over more. Now you have to make room to accommodate his personal effects. That’s one way to make space. Another way is to get a bigger wardrobe so you never have to change anything but can accommodate additions. There is also the option of redecorating from scratch, throwing all the familiars out and then going furniture shopping with your boyfriend.

Each of these pathways results in the same outcome of making room but the effect of the process is very distinct. I will leave you to contemplate this distinction.

However, what I really want to narrow in on is how when we want to get to know people, we must make space for their person to sit beside ours. That space involves a conscious disassociation of how their flaws may impact us.

Precisely, I am saying we must give them room to unpack and in that process before all the folding starts, appreciate and observe all the mesh and colours of their fabric. In this space, we can really decide how comprehensive the association ought to be or at least we can just sit with the knowledge.

This narration presupposes new connections but there is also much to adapt for older ones and this often involves the reconstruction of shared spaces. It involves decluttering, boxing and unboxing, adjusting fabrics to conform with the season and a whole other metric of adaptation. That is all still a part of making spaces.

A core element in making space is detachment. Letting things unfold without the need to personalize it. It should happen with people too, giving them the time and space to unravel without the need to own their properties or take over their narrative.

Another aspect to this is not judging a book by its cover and truly when we say this, we typically interpret it to mean that not everyone is bad or that bad people have good things to offer but the inverse is also true, good people are not always good. In essence, there is a surprise to be felt in dealing with people. So, making space is about letting people present themselves as they are able or as they choose to in the circumstances.

Have you noticed that nothing about this conversation has pointed towards decision-making?  That’s because making space is about observation, not judgement. Of course, it is inevitable that in observing we might be filing details to reach a decision later, but the goal of this process is to be able to look at events and happenings from a holistic perspective.

How can we really love people if we are selective of the parts we want to know?

Making space is just what it is, it is so simple, so perspective, it is as simple as emptying out space, creating a void so something else can harbour. It is also like how you burrow a hole in the soil for something else to bloom. It is many things through different contexts but the elementality doesn’t alter, it is simply that.

Make space, that includes yourself. Give yourself room to change and become, to metamorphose, and allow yourself love all the parts of you you fight even when you want to be something else entirely.

Xoxo,

Dcconossieur.