Our world has become filled to the brim with words. Often too many, for they can hurt, judge, and divide. We are surrounded by a constant avalanche of commentary, opinions, analyses or observations and only some of them are uplifting and inspiring. Given that everyone today has the possibility of unlimited expression, I feel like simply remaining silent on every topic. I often ask myself, “why would I write?” when everything has already been written. Perhaps only to create art, to express admiration, to name beauty, somehow like painting a picture?

At the end of my summer holidays, on a long car trip, I listened to the audiobook “Światłoczułość” by Jakub Jarno (not translated into English yet). The positive reviews of this book are not exaggerated, because the author truly captures reality with so much passion. Moreover, it’s an incredibly difficult and cruel reality of war times. But still you read it with curiosity, noticing the light, celebrating the digressions and vivid descriptions, feeling that there is something more in all the places where looking on the surface you only see death. It’s good that someone can still compose a feast out of letters and sentences, analogies and meanings. So I, too, have longed to write, though it’s difficult in a world drowned in an overabundance of words.

Life today is starting to demand silence from us in a much louder manner and a pause in the whirlwind of overstimulation, but at the same time, it invites us to fill that silence with content, meaning, and hope. Today, when, after a month of school madness, my body decided to rebel and postpone my numerous weekend plans, I’m immersing myself in the silence and recalling a time of contemplation amidst the Masurian nature. I thought then, among other things, that all the happiness in the world can be contained in simple gestures, ordinary presence, and small joys. It doesn’t take many words at all.