There are days when home feels too familiar, and work feels too demanding. Somewhere in between, there’s a space we rarely talk about, a space we actually need. Not a place to escape. But a place to meet ourselves….
Lately, I’ve been feeling this quiet pull, to step away, not dramatically, but intentionally. To create distance, even just for a moment, from the noise of routine, expectations, and the constant movement of life. Because sometimes, what we’re really searching for isn’t rest. It’s understanding.
So I decided to take a small road trip to East Bali. Not for luxury. Not for a plan. But for space not for distraction, but for reflection…
Somewhere in that stillness, I found myself committing to something simple: taking care of a guppy fish and building a small aquascape. It sounds small, almost insignificant. But watching that tiny ecosystem come to life shifted something in me.
A contained world. Balanced. Fragile. Quietly alive.
There is no guarantee of tomorrow in that space. Everything depends on how well you understand it, how carefully you maintain it, how present you are in keeping it alive. You don’t control it completely. You learn it. You observe. You adjust. You care.
And maybe that’s the point. In something so small, you begin to understand what it means to sustain life not perfectly, but consciously. Every element, water, plants, fish, depends on each other to survive. Nothing is excessive. Nothing is wasted. There is no ego in that system, only coexistence. And somehow, in observing something so small, I began to see something much bigger.
The Void That We Avoid
That sense of scale followed me into an indoor aquarium. Sharks, stingrays, octopus-creatures made for vast, from open oceans, now moving quietly within glass walls. They are still alive. Still adapting. Still existing.
Standing there, watching them, a question surfaced:
What does “space” mean to them?
Do they feel the absence of something they cannot name?
Do they experience a kind of stillness or even a void? Or is that something uniquely human to question, to feel incomplete, to search for meaning beyond survival?
Because as I watched them move within their limits, I couldn’t help but reflect on how we live, too. Not always physically confined, but mentally, emotionally constantly occupied. We fill every gap. With work. With people. With noise.
As if emptiness is something to fix. As if silence is something to avoid.
But maybe it isn’t.
“Maybe we’re not meant to fill every space. Maybe we need that void not as emptiness, but as a pause.”
A place where thoughts can settle. Where emotions don’t need to be performed. Where we’re not trying to prove anything to anyone.
Because the truth is, we will never be perfect. And maybe peace doesn’t come from fixing everything maybe it comes from allowing things to stay unanswered, unfinished, uncertain.
That question about the void, about space didn’t leave me when I walked out of the aquarium. If anything, it followed me outside, pulling me back toward something I couldn’t quite name yet. Toward open air. Toward nature. Toward what people simply call a calling and maybe that’s exactly what it was.
Not to escape. But to see more clearly. To humble myself again, away from the rhythm of busy routines. To feel something real, and find myself without trying too hard to.
Because being close to nature doesn’t magically solve your life. It doesn’t hand you answers the way we expect. But it does something quieter, something more honest. It reflects you back to yourself. Away from a world that constantly asks you to prove something, show something, be something. A world that subtly feeds the ego, often without us even realizing it.
And in that distance, something softens. You begin to notice that every living thing whether free in the ocean or contained in an aquarium is simply trying to survive, adapt, and exist within its own reality. Just like us.
Even in that stillness, the mind doesn’t stop. There’s always a quiet layer of thoughts moving beneath the surface. But maybe the goal was never to silence it completely. Maybe it’s simply to sit with it. To observe without reacting. To let thoughts pass without needing to hold onto all of them. To allow space without rushing to fill it.
Because stillness is not the absence of noise. It’s the acceptance of it.
So, What Does This Space Really Mean?
Maybe that’s what this whole journey was trying to show me that we need a space beyond home and work. A space where we are not defined by roles, expectations, or performance. A space where we can simply exist. Where even the smallest things, a fish, a plant, a quiet road can reconnect us to something deeper, something we often overlook.
Because maybe we are all just living within different ecosystems, trying to adapt, trying to belong, trying to understand.
And maybe the space in between is not where we get lost.
It’s where we finally begin to find ourselves.
SIMPLY STRIPE 