くうき}
かざる
しずかなへや
air / to decorate / a quiet room
Recently, I learned how to move furniture that doesn’t exist.
It happened on a Tuesday, or maybe a Wednesday. The days have been blending together lately, like watercolors left out in the rain. I was standing in my living room, looking at a bookshelf I had just arranged. It was perfect. The books were color-coded. The small cactus was placed at the exact angle where the afternoon sun would hit it. A vintage record player sat in the corner, silent, looking very pleased with itself.
I took a photo. I posted it. I waited for the digital applause.
But then, I sat down on the sofa and felt a draft. Not a physical draft—the windows were closed—but a draft inside my chest. It was a hollow, whistling wind.
I realized then that I was living in a showroom. The outside was curated, polished, and ready for inspection. But the inside—the room where I actually lived, the room behind my ribs—was empty. Or worse, it was filled with junk I hadn’t looked at in years.
This is the skill I have been learning: Interior design for the invisible.
The Unopened Boxes
We spend our lives decorating the exterior. We buy the coat, the car, the degree. We learn how to speak at dinner parties about politics and wine. We learn how to smile in a way that suggests we are essentially fine, even when we are not.
But no one teaches us how to furnish the soul.
I imagine the soul as a small, quiet apartment in a part of the city that the trains don’t reach. For years, I treated this apartment like a storage unit. I shoved things in there and closed the door.
- Box 1: The time I said the wrong thing to a person I loved and never apologized.
- Box 2: The ambition I gave up because it was safer to be average.
- Box 3: The fear that I am fundamentally boring.
They were all there, piled up, collecting dust. The windows were dirty. The air was stale.
The lesson I learned is simple but terrifying: You have to open the boxes.
You cannot decorate a room that is full of garbage. You have to clean it first. And cleaning the soul is not like cleaning a kitchen. There is no spray for regret. You have to pick it up, hold it in your hands, feel its weight, and then—this is the hardest part—you have to carry it out the door.
The Softness of the Walls
Once the room is empty, you must decide what to put in it.
I used to think strength meant having walls of steel. I thought being an adult meant being impervious. If you couldn’t be hurt, you won.
But I have learned that a soul with steel walls is a prison. It is safe, yes, but nothing can get in. Not light. Not music. Not the smell of rain.
So, I am learning to re-decorate with softness.
I am hanging curtains made of forgiveness. Not just forgiveness for others—that is relatively easy—but forgiveness for myself. For the version of me that was weak. For the version of me that didn’t know better.
I am placing a rug on the floor made of patience.
In the modern world, we want healing to be like an Amazon delivery. We want it overnight. We want to click “Confirm Purchase” on a better version of ourselves.
But the soul operates on a different time zone. It operates on tree time. It operates on cat time. It grows slowly, in the dark, when you aren’t looking.
Decorating your soul means accepting that the renovation will never be finished. You will never stand back and say, “There. It is done.” There will always be a new corner that needs light. There will always be a floorboard that creaks.
The Guests You Allow In
The most critical part of this new skill is security. Not locks and alarms, but curation.
For years, I let anyone walk into my inner room with their muddy shoes.
If someone was loud, I let them in.
If someone needed me to be small so they could feel big, I let them in.
If someone loved me only when I was useful, I let them in.
I was running a hotel with no front desk.
Now, I am learning to be the doorman.
I am learning to look at the people in my life and ask: Does this person bring light into the room? Or do they break the furniture?
It is a painful process. You have to ask some people to leave. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to make a scene. You just gently open the door and say, “I’m sorry, but there is no space for you here anymore.”
And then you invite the others. The ones who bring warmth. The ones who sit quietly on the sofa and listen to the music. The ones who see the cracks in the wall and don’t try to fix them, but simply say, “Ah, yes. A crack. The light comes in through there.”
The Meaning of the Object
I am currently sitting in a café, writing this. The coffee is lukewarm. The jazz playing is something from the late 50s, a saxophone that sounds like it’s recounting a long, complicated dream.
I am practicing the skill of collecting moments.
These are the ornaments of the soul.
- The way the light hits the water in the glass.
- The feeling of fresh sheets on a Sunday night.
- The specific silence after a good conversation ends.
I collect them. I polish them. I place them on the invisible mantelpiece inside my chest.
When the world gets loud—and it is always getting louder—I can retreat into this room. I can sit in the chair I built out of resilience. I can look at the paintings I made out of joy. I can feel the warmth of the fire I lit with my own honesty.
It is not a perfect room. It is small. It is sometimes messy.
But for the first time in my life, it feels like home.
And I think, perhaps, that is the only lesson worth learning. That we are not just the architects of our careers or our social profiles. We are the curators of our own inner peace.
So, if you see me staring into space, doing absolutely nothing, do not worry.
I am just hanging a picture in the hallway of my mind.
I am just watering the plants in the garden of my chest.
I am just decorating.
life 