The Space Between

I was walking through the grocery store this morning, trying to find a specific brand of tea, when I realized I was standing in the way of a stock clerk. He didn’t say a word, just gave me a small, knowing nod as he slid a crate into a gap that seemed far too narrow to exist. It made me think about how much of our lives are spent negotiating these tiny, temporary boundaries. We are constantly folding ourselves up, pulling back our edges, and making room for things that are much larger and faster than we are. We do it so often that it becomes a rhythm, a dance of retreat and return. It is a strange, quiet kind of resilience—the way we shrink to let the world pass through, only to expand again the second the danger or the noise has moved on. Do you ever feel like you are just waiting for the tracks to clear so you can set your life back out on the table?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this exact feeling of precarious rhythm in his image titled Maeklong Railway Track. It is a beautiful look at how people find a way to live right in the path of the inevitable. Does this scene remind you of a time you had to make space for something unexpected?