the real privilege

Sometimes, you only understand much later
what the real privilege was.

Lately, I have been returning
to a yoga room in Copenhagen.

Windows clouded by breath.
The damp Copenhagen air finding its way inside.

The familiar mixture of effort, silence
and the ordinary human lives
we carried into the room.

⚪︎

What returns now is not what was taught.

It is what the room allowed:
for a while, we could become
a little less guarded
in one another’s presence.

So many separate lives,
for an hour or two,
finding the same rhythm.

And with some people,
a rarer kind of openness appeared —
when the need to be convincing,
certain, special or liked
began to loosen.

Then years passed.
People moved on.
The thread became invisible.

Or so it seemed.

⚪︎

One ordinary afternoon,
I came across an interview
with someone I had known there.

I was drifting somewhere
between tasks and websites,
before collecting the children
from school and daycare.

A little removed from what mattered.

And suddenly, there she was.
Speaking about her illness.
About slowing down.
About the garden before anyone wakes,
the body asking to be listened to.

Her life had become limited.
And somehow, within those limits,
more open.

More honest.

⚪︎

As I read,
the photographs had a strange,
weightless quality.

They seemed to be telling
another story inside the story —
as if they had already made room
for something the words
had not yet said.

A little later,
almost without deciding to,
I searched for her.

I wanted to find
the messages we had exchanged —
and see how many years had passed
between then and now.

Instead, I found a post
written by her family.
She was no longer here.

⚪︎

For a moment,
the interview changed shape.
The photographs became something else.

And what had seemed distant
moved nearer.

The thread that had seemed invisible
felt suddenly close enough to touch.

The moment felt like a small bow
to the mystery of what remains.

How someone can disappear,
and still,
what had mattered
can come very near.

⚪︎

Only then did the real privilege
become obvious.

Perhaps we never fully know
what a moment between two people
leaves behind.

A little more trust.
A little more tenderness.
A little more courage
to let simple things matter.

⚪︎

Perhaps this is what practice,
at its best,
makes possible.

Not to make us untouchable.
Not to lift us
above ordinary human life.

Almost the opposite:
for us to become less defended.
Easier to reach.

⚪︎

Just tender enough
to feel
what was already real.