Sharing Space

When you share a space with someone, you tend to forget that it’s not just you who is sharing; the space also shares something with you. 
It influences you in its subtle ways, talks to you, guides you and your behavior. 

It tells you how to sit, where to look, what is important and what can be taken for granted.

When there’s ample space to be shared, even your private conversations become open books to the space. You feel like you can share your thoughts with the space around you more easily than you can with the person they are for or about.

You talk aloud to the air. You look away, at other things in this space engulfing you.
But it’s still an intimate conversation. 
You confide in it because you know the space won’t betray your trust.
You profess your love to it, even if it’s not for it, because you know it won’t reject your feelings.
You confess your emotions, your desires, because it is a good listener. It does not interrupt.
For a moment, the person you are conversing with becomes immaterial, inconsequential, because it is the space you are speaking with. They are simply the audience.

And that’s when you realize which of the two you are more comfortable with.

But when the space is small, your value for it changes.
Like in a train, you face the person you are speaking with. 
You don’t look away and address walls or floors.
Even a casual conversation becomes difficult to make private.
The space then only provides air molecules to facilitate the sound travel.

So what decides what? 
Are we searching for the person who we are comfortable looking at even when there are other options during conversations? 
Or are we looking for the person we can be close to in crowded spaces without really looking at them?
What is more important?
The freedom to ignore or the confidence not to?