I’ve been in so many different types of spaces lately, and in relationship to environment and object. I’ve been wondering about the spaces that hold us, and the objects that sustain us.
In art classes, we learn to paint and draw still lifes. Objects put together by shape and texture and size. We study them for long periods of time, over and over. Comparing object against other object. Color and form. We give these seemingly ordinary objects more attention.
But they are just objects of life, with attention paid like currency - we honor it more with the time we give to it.
A space is neutral until we prescribe meaning, or a relationship to it. Think about seeing a house or apartment for the first time - you apply the possibility of meaning and memory to the space. “I could live here,” you think. But it’s still only with moments and memory that you really develop relationship with it. You add birthday parties, and sick days, and vacuuming the carpet, and the big storm where you lost power for three days. Memory and meaning enrich a space and make it yours.
I think about and wonder about the objects that have held me, cared for me, and the attention I give to them. I study them for long periods of time, over and over. Now I will always give these seemingly ordinary objects more love, for they are the things and the place that held me in difficult times.
What do you reach for without thinking, and what does that reaching say?
There’s the chipped mug you keep returning to, even though you own others—the one that fits just right in your hands, as if shaped by them. There’s the corner of the couch that knows the shape of your body, the light that hits the floor at 3:17 p.m. in early spring, the sweater you pull on not for fashion but for familiarity. These are not luxury items or curated aesthetics. These are companions. Witnesses. Extensions of self.
We don’t often think of objects as participants in our emotional landscapes. But I think of what Roland Barthes wrote in ‘A Lover’s Discourse’ - that love is not always for a person, but for the environment created around them, the rituals and markers of their presence. I wonder if the same is true of the self. That we fall in love with our own lives through the repetition of certain things: the bowl of soup, the bedside book, the quiet lamp that makes evening feel like safety.
There is comfort in the still life. The idea that something can be both unmoving and deeply alive. That a fruit, a pitcher, a piece of cloth on a table can invite contemplation, intimacy, attention. In art, we are taught to look more closely. In life, we must teach ourselves the same. To not only use our objects but to see them. To recognize what they have witnessed. What they have carried.
Virginia Woolf once wrote that “a room of one’s own” was a necessity, not a luxury. But I wonder now if it’s not just a room we need—it’s a relationship to space itself. A consciousness of what it means to be held by your surroundings. To see your home not as backdrop, but as collaborator.
Lately, I’ve been practicing gratitude in quiet, mundane ways. I thank the thick socks that warm my feet before I step outside. I place my hand on the wall as I walk to bed and say, silently, you are holding me. I sit with the still life of my own environment and study it - shape against shape, texture against texture, color against color. I name the beauty where I once saw only utility.
Because sometimes, the spaces we live in are the first to notice when we’re falling apart. And sometimes, they’re the only ones that hold us when we do.
So I ask again:
What are the spaces that hold you?
What are the objects that care for you?
And how might your life change if you began to care for them, too?