A few days ago,
I entered the elevator alone.
A delivery driver stepped in
a few floors later.
“Hello,”
he said gently.
“Hello,”
I answered.
He stood quietly behind me.
Then I heard it.
A calm female narrator’s voice
coming softly from his phone.
“Come sit here…”
“Your husband…”
“Your wife…”
The driver had probably turned it on
during the short gap
between deliveries.
Dropping off a package.
Walking back to the car.
A few empty minutes.
I didn’t turn around.
I simply stood there
facing the elevator door.
I had seen elderly people
listening to audio programs
while walking before.
But somehow,
seeing a young man
listening to something
about marriage and relationships
felt different.
Maybe he needed comfort.
Maybe advice.
Or maybe—
he simply couldn’t leave
the space empty.
Filling Every Small Gap
And suddenly,
I realized
my husband does the same thing.
Whenever there’s a small gap,
he fills it immediately.
A cigarette.
A martial arts novel on his phone.
News headlines.
A phone call.
Something is always entering
the space.
And honestly—
I used to do the same thing.
If I arrived early
before meeting my daughter,
I immediately started doing something.
Walking around nearby shops.
Picking up a few small things.
Placing online orders
while walking.
Or finding a café table,
opening my laptop
to work on my blog.
I rarely left
the moment untouched.
I kept filling
every small space
without even noticing.
Honestly,
sometimes I didn’t even fill the space
with important things.
While waiting for my daughter,
I used to stand there
deleting advertisement messages
from my phone.
One by one.
My daughter laughed
when she saw me.
But strangely,
simple things like that
felt less exhausting
than doing something bigger.
So I kept doing it.
I already knew
they were advertisements.
I didn’t even read them.
I simply deleted them.
Just to make
the unread numbers
disappear from the screen.
One day,
I noticed something similar
on the subway.
A young woman
was standing beside me,
holding her phone in one hand.
She wasn’t really looking at anything.
She simply kept sliding
the home screen sideways
with her finger.
Again.
And again.
Not searching.
Not reading.
Just moving the screen.
And somehow,
that small movement
caught my attention.
Because I understood it immediately.
It was another way
of filling the gap.
Not with something intense.
Not with deep focus.
Just enough movement
to soften the empty space.
And honestly—
there’s nothing strange about it.
We are simply used to it.
Used to filling
every small gap
without noticing.
Mid-point
Sometimes,
we are not tired
because life is too full.
Sometimes, we are tired
because we never leave
any space empty.
A Different Way of Filling the Space
These days,
there are countless unread messages
still sitting on my phone.
Unread numbers
I haven’t checked.
Advertisements
I never opened.
And somehow—
they don’t bother me anymore.
Now,
when a small gap appears,
I try something different.
It became
a simple reset
inside ordinary moments.
Instead of deleting messages,
I look at the sky.
Or the leaves
moving in the wind.
Even in the middle of the city,
I practice changing the habit.
On the bus,
instead of staring at signs,
I look upward.
Toward open space.
While holding the subway handle,
I notice the feeling
in my hand.
The pressure under my feet.
The movement of my body.
Small sensory moments.
My own quiet way
of feeling the space.
And strangely,
when I do that,
the gap no longer feels
empty.
Or uncomfortable.
Or boring.
It starts to feel calm.
Almost restful.
As if the space
no longer
needed to be filled.
The small gaps
didn’t disappear.
But the way
I moved inside them
slowly changed.
