I asked my daughter if she believed “cold” exists. She said yes, and I told her that, in fact, there’s no such thing as “cold.” Cold is the absence of heat. Then, she said something unexpected.
Photo by Todd Diemer at unsplash
– ”If cold is the absence of heat, then, it means heat has space to go there.” – she is only nine years old, and the answer is amazing.
Often we understand absence as lacking, loss, negative experience, and bad feeling. But maybe we could change our way of understanding the word, and see the space for welcoming new experiences, new gains, new relationships. Or it is an opportunity to experience a culture of gift, allowing to embrace deeply a lifestyle of essentialism and minimalism.