Space

A meditation, a reflection on the word space — and the meaning we attach to it.

When I am claustrophobic, I feel enclosed, as if I can’t breathe. I feel as if there isn’t enough space.

When a significant other breaks up with me or moves out, they might say they need their own space to figure things out, or that I was suffocating them — just give them some space.

When I am staring at nothing, thinking of another time, or trying to come up with an idea — perhaps I am not paying attention to something I’m supposed to — you may say I am spaced out or staring into space.

The area between two words is a space. When I am typing and come to the end of a sentence, I use a double space.

The world, this earth, is surrounded by outer space. An outer space, scientists say, that is always expanding and never ends.

When we are watching for someone who hasn’t come yet, we save them a space.

When I am overweight or feeling self-conscious, I feel like I take up too much space.

If I am thinking science-minded, space doesn’t have mass, space isn’t matter, space indeed is the lack of mass or matter — but the air we breathe has molecules floating in it, so space is diluted matter — air — how does it exist? Until we create it, by moving something?

If a space is the lack of something, does it always have to be surrounded by something with substance, a non-space, in order to exist? How is space created, then, if space is a lack of something?

Sometimes space is temporary, because it is keeping place for another thing.

Since we are ever curious, ever moving, just like the atoms we are made of, we are ever finding, exploring, creating space.

Julie S. Paschold

September 1, 2019