Space

Space

What is space?

It is the black vastness beyond our Earth’s atmosphere, a three-dimensional region where everything exists. Isn’t it?

Yes. True, maybe.

For many, space is just a place, black nothingness with everything in it.

For them, it is just a part of their physical world, something to be read about in science textbooks, on the internet or in that magazine NASA publishes every month. Or better yet, to get starry eyed about, watching the latest Star Wars installment.

For some, their space could be a thing. Impossible? No, they say.

Because space could be some possession you hold dear to yourself. It could be your home, yes. Or it could be your phone which holds your entire life in just 16 GB of software and 4.7 inches of metal, glass and Godknowswhat.

And yet, for several other hopeless romantics, space could be that one person.

That one person you love more than yourself. A person you love so hard as if your life depends on it. A person who is your whole existence, your entire universe.

Your space.

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But I am not a person who thinks of space just as a region. No.

And I am not a hopeless romantic, I can assure you that.

So, what is space, I asked one day.

I mean really, what is it?

And then one fine summer night, lying on my back on the rooftop, arms tucked clumsily beneath my head, black eyes fixed on the black above me, trying to discover undiscovered constellations among the starry mess, I found my answer.

Space isn’t a place.

It is not a person or a thing either.

No.

Space is a feeling. A feeling so vast it’s hard to fathom, hard to stomach.

It is black everythingness littered with countless stars which make you get through a bad day.

It is the warmness that spreads from your heart to the tips of fingers and every other inch of your body when you do something you love. Or someone you love does something for you.

When you are on the precipice, ready to plunge into the great unknown, it is the inexplicable nervousness mingled with excitement as it bubbles up in your gut and rises up, up and up until it has flooded your head and you can’t think straight anymore.

It is that tug you feel somewhere inside you, your pounding heart playing the harp with your unending veins when you see something beautiful, bewitching.

It is that feeling which gives you sleepless nights, or maybe peaceful slumbers too. That feeling which makes you feel on edge, yet oddly at peace at the same time. That feeling that paints your life with goofy sunshine one moment, and dismal black clouds the other.

That feeling which engulfs you in its vastness, wrapping its sinewy arms, starry and black, around you till you can feel nothing but its ghostly breath filling up inside your whole being like smoke envelops a room.

It is that feeling you can’t quite explain. That feeling you can’t put a finger to.

That feeling.

Space is just that.

That feeling.

Just.

And much more.

It is nothing, actually.

But everything at the same time.