steam rises from soup
a window open at dusk
the moth finds its way
A fit body, a calm mind, and a house full of love. Three simple things. The kind of words you might overhear in passing, forget for years, and then suddenly remember when you need them most. They cannot be bought—they must be earned.
I think about this sentence often. Not in a lofty way, but in the small hours when the city feels half-asleep and I am caught somewhere between memory and the present. Tonight, writing to you feels like sitting across a table in a kitchen where the light is too yellow, the dishes haven’t been washed, and the clock ticks just a little too loudly.
A Fit Body
Bodies have always been a mystery to me. They hold us, betray us, carry us, collapse on us.
I remember a morning in Basel, running along the river just before dawn. The air was so cold it burned my lungs, and the cobblestones were slick with last night’s rain. At first, everything hurt. My legs felt heavy, my chest was tight, and my breath sounded like sandpaper. But after some invisible threshold, the resistance gave way. My body moved as if it belonged to someone else—lighter, freer, less demanding.
That moment reminded me: strength isn’t a sudden gift, but something you earn by returning, again and again, even when you don’t want to. You can buy the shoes, the watch, the protein drink. But the body only answers to effort. And to patience.
The truth is, most days I fail. I stay inside. I cut corners. I let fatigue win. But the body, in its stubborn generosity, remembers even small kindnesses. A walk at dusk. A stretch after waking. It whispers: give me enough of these and I will carry you.
A Calm Mind
If the body can be coaxed, the mind is wilder.
I’ve tried forcing it quiet, but thoughts scatter like startled birds, impossible to catch. Calm, I’ve learned, arrives sideways. It sneaks in when I stop looking.
Once, on a ferry across the Adriatic, I stood at the railing watching the sea. The horizon was gray, featureless, without beginning or end. For several minutes, my mind stopped speaking. I wasn’t thinking about the future or regretting the past. I was simply there, with water, with wind, with nothing. When I noticed the stillness, it startled me, like realizing you’ve been holding your breath.
Another time, in a small hotel room in Shinjuku, I couldn’t sleep. The walls were thin, the hum of the air conditioner persistent. I stared at the ceiling, restless, until finally I gave up on sleep and just listened. The rhythm of the machine was steady, almost like breathing. Slowly, I felt myself sink. Calm came not because I sought it, but because I stopped fighting.
A calm mind cannot be bought. It is earned in these ordinary moments—standing at railings, listening to machines, noticing air and silence. The lesson is always the same: you don’t conquer calm. You allow it.
A House Full of Love
Love is the strangest of the three. It doesn’t behave like the body or the mind. It is not coaxed. It is not surrendered to. It is lived in.
I think of my grandmother’s house in Slovenia. The floorboards creaked. The wallpaper peeled in the corners. In summer, the flies hummed against the window glass. Yet I never doubted it was a house full of love. It wasn’t the meals on the table, though they mattered. It wasn’t the warmth of the stove in winter, though I remember that clearly. It was the way her presence filled every empty space. It was how, no matter how uneven the walls, I always felt safe sitting at that table.
A house full of love isn’t perfect. It doesn’t look like the glossy photographs in furniture catalogues. It smells of laundry drying in the hallway. It sounds like someone humming in the kitchen while stirring soup. It holds traces of laughter even after the people have gone to bed.
And you can’t buy that. You can’t order it from a catalogue. You earn it—through patience, through care, through the willingness to let someone else see you when you are tired, or angry, or not enough.
The Circle
These three things are never separate. They move in a circle. A fit body steadies the mind. A calm mind makes space for love. A house full of love gives you strength to return to the body when it falters.
Break one, and the others weaken. Strengthen one, and the others begin to grow.
It sounds simple when written down. Living it is not simple at all. Life interrupts. Jobs exhaust. Love frays. The body resists. But that is the quiet work of life: to return again and again, even when we fail.
A Night I Remember
There was a night once in Milan. I had been working too hard, eating badly, sleeping little. My body ached. My mind was frantic. The apartment I was staying in felt empty and cold, a house without love. I sat on the floor, my back against the wall, and cried.
It wasn’t sadness, not exactly. It was the exhaustion of carrying myself badly for too long.
Eventually, I stood. I drank water. I ate the last piece of bread I had. I pulled a blanket around me and slept. The next day, I walked slowly through the streets. I noticed the smell of espresso drifting out of cafés, the laundry lines strung between buildings, the sound of church bells in the distance. My body softened. My mind stilled. Later that evening, I called someone I loved, and their voice filled the empty apartment.
Nothing dramatic. But in that small sequence—body, mind, love—the circle turned again. And for the first time in weeks, I felt whole.
What I Want to Tell You
If I were keeping this only for myself, I might stop here. But since you are reading, I want to give you something to carry.
A fit body is not made in gyms but in small repeated kindnesses: the walk after dinner, the stretch before bed, the run on a damp morning when you’d rather stay inside.
A calm mind is not won in battles but in listening: the hum of machines, the silence of water, the pause in your own breathing when you forget to chase.
A house full of love is not built with walls but with presence: the chipped mug that still holds coffee, the sigh of someone falling asleep beside you, the way laughter lingers in the corners.
None of this can be bought. That’s what makes them worth something.
So when I think about what I want from life, it isn’t wealth, or certainty, or recognition. It is this: a body that carries me lightly, a mind that doesn’t drown me, a house where love lingers even when the lights are off.
They cannot be bought. They must be earned.
And perhaps that is the only lesson that matters.
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