Space is an Opportunity

Space is an opportunity that is not given to everyone: a screen, a closet, a room, a desk; the square meters that allow you to carry out an activity.

I recently bought a desk, arranged my room and placed it against the wall, next to the window. It measures fifty-four centimeters by one meter and has three small bars, in front and on the sides, so that things do not fall - limits.

To place the desk I need a more or less wide space, so I decided to move the bed, freedom that I get due to the size of the room. Freedom that, I admit, not everyone always has. — Is space freedom? -.

During the first four years of college I lived with my grandparents and a cousin almost ten years older than me. We shared a room: two single beds pushed together, each with a bureau on the other side. The closet was already occupied, the drawers too, I kept my clothes in a suitcase and the shoes under the bed.

There comes an age when sharing a room with someone can be detrimental to your development; you learn many things, other things of course, but today, sitting and writing on my new desk, I realize how important it is to have your own space. A privilege. — Is space a privilege? -.

The space is an opportunity for intimacy, sexuality, friendship and sociability.

A terrace to invite your friends or a room to be with someone.

When you are deprived of this opportunity, these square meters and this privacy, you are also deprived of other things: development. — Is space development? -.

I lived in Cancun for a certain time, my adolescence and early youth. I remember, in the last house we lived in -built by my father for ourselves- that, despite being the middle brother, I got -we agreed- the single room. I remember, just like today, placing my bed in a corner, placing the desk behind the window and at the entrance a bookcase with all my books. That was my room and it was a tremendous spatial opportunity to develop myself. In that room I painted, read, wrote, I learned to be with myself, eventually even with someone else. Learn to share your space and yourself. In that room I found myself.

That's when I moved in with my grandparents, where that spatial freedom was much more limited and therefore the possibility — Is space a possibility? — other things, including those mentioned above. However, I learned other things: order, learning to be in the same room with someone of different habits; I learned that the space for reading, writing or whatever is a privilege, an opportunity that we should not miss.

Of course, one looks for other spaces, other schedules — Is space time? -; one looks for company and one looks for solitude, and a house - at least that one - is noble enough to offer both.

Now, many of the spatial deficiencies are really circumstantial failures: living with two people in their eighties, sleeping with a person in their 30s, the space is there, but the circumstances do not encourage it. — Is space a circumstance? -.

This is in terms of private space, what happens when the same principles are applied with public space?