Beyond Me Time and My Space, Let Us Cherish Our Third Space
Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Words uttered by a character in Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace. Maybe Tolstoy was talking around the untapped human potential which gets lost between basic needs as home and work, i.e. food and sex.
When I am in my zone my senses climb up to a higher band. Every morning I smell Desi ghee parathas when I am about to close my 10-kilometre cycling loop. This is all but human. We need the space of our comforts. A space to wake up our senses. Modern lifestyle has boxed our sense of space between work and home. This is the reason everyone needs a third space-a place between home and work. A third space to unwind the mental muscles and become a social animal. For somebody the coffee aroma, for another the corner seat, a portrait window, or a lousy couch.
In modern terms, third space is a physical concept of a space where a person spends his or her “me time”. Most of the time this third space has its network effects. Traditionally it used to be a place for communal religious practices like mosques, churches, and temples.
Over the time, humans needed a “me time” and a “my space” without making God party to it, so they developed and fostered secular spaces like museums, theatres, and art galleries. In the renaissance period, these secular spaces advanced in the form of guilds, societies, clubs, lodges, and sometimes in shape of secret groups. For so many centuries it was always an ‘us versus them’ debate, with suspicion.
Among these groups, what democratized was a novel third space- the birth of a coffee shop. Like Facebook of this time, café culture took by storm the philosophical and literary landscape of its time. An egalitarian place where anyone could enter. European called these third spaces as ‘Penny Universities’. These places became accessible, fair, and thought powerhouses for everyone.
In Paris, one finds over 5 coffee shops in a single block. Sartre’s philosophical musings are best enjoyed in the café setting. One reason for inspiration even for American writers was this cafe culture. Ernest Hemingway was known for his café writings. Recent fictional heartthrob Harry Porter’s writer Ms. J. K. Rowling made a Scotland-based café Elephant House, an enigma of its kind. It has become a space for literary pilgrimage. Supposedly this café provides a knife if you visit the bathroom to inscribe your name.
The coffee shops were pre-renaissance spaces for Asians living on the Mediterranean side. Known as Qehva Khanas- or tea houses, these spaces percolated and brewed the ideas and philosophies of its time. These spaces became idea marketplaces. Quite many of these spaces turned out to be incubation centres for dervishes as hotbeds for esoteric and interdisciplinary knowledge. Most of the times, these spaces oscillated between holy and unholy. Between mainstream to off stream, from the sacred to the profane.
South Asia has a culture of its own. The concept of Autaq and Hujras- is a third space of its kind. However, rapid urbanisation, with structured housing colonies based on economic status, has eroded the traditional third space. One can still imagine the old folks sharing a Huqqa with endless conversations in a typical South Asian village setting. Interestingly, these conversations have a broader spectrum, from one form of tabloid gossip to esoteric traditions.
No corner office or the best residence with a golf course view can replace the need of this third space. It is the space where a person gets away from basic yet human bodily needs. All the retractions and pastimes cannot replace the third space. It is a place that allows a person to take the lid off the pressure cooker, uncork the wine bottle or the same as Zen monks put a verse in a bottle and throw in a river.
Let us accept that we are suckers for our own needs. I cannot say no to a poetry reading session and so maybe the case with the folks who go to the gym to make friends instead of burning their bellies. No Matter What, Beyond Me Time and My Space, Let Us Cherish Our Third Space.
Moin Uddin is an occasional writer who loves to write about culture, economy, and psychology. He publishes on www.medium.com/@moinhunzai and tweets @moinhunzai
Originally published at http://mnexpress.blogspot.com.
