Beyond the glow of the screen - on attention, silence, and human presence
Sometimes I wonder when exactly we began to fear the empty spaces in our own lives. Not the great emptiness that comes with separation, loss, or unfulfilled dreams, but those small intervals we once barely noticed: a few minutes before waking, the journey home, the anticipation of someone's arrival, the afternoon light falling across a table, the silence between two thoughts. Today, it seems that every such pause creates a need within us to fill it. Almost unconsciously, our hand reaches for the phone, the screen lights up, and a foreign world enters our consciousness before we have even had the opportunity to meet our own. The day begins not with the feeling of returning to life, but with checking what is happening somewhere else. News, messages, images, other people's anxieties, achievements, and opinions - everything enters through a small illuminated surface while our own thoughts are still somewhere in the half-dreaming space of the night. I could not describe this transfo...