No Squares, Just Never-Ending Circles
A few months ago, I decided to change the way I sleep. I bought what is called a Japanese mattress—a futon placed on the floor. Part of the decision was practical. I live in a small studio, and I wanted to simplify my life. But there was something else I was looking for too: I wanted to sleep closer to the ground.
Living with chronic pain has changed my relationship to the earth. I often connect to her to soothe myself, feel less isolated, and work directly with her in my own healing. I imagine releasing what no longer serves me into the ground. I imagine the earth holding what I cannot. So sleeping closer to the floor made sense to me.
Except my body did not entirely agree. Over time, the hardness of the surface became increasingly difficult. A pain body does not always appreciate firmness. And because I live in such a small space, I do not have many other soft surfaces to retreat to. My bed is not only where I sleep. Sometimes it is where I need to recover.
Yesterday, feeling unwell, uncomfortable, and a little defeated, I started thinking that it was finally time to buy another bed. But I am stubborn. And beds are expensive. Before giving up, I started wondering if there was any way to make what I already had work.
While I was thinking about this, the windows were wide open. The wind was strong, and the air coming into the apartment had changed. It had that particular coldness that arrives one day without announcement and tells you that the season is turning. In Berlin, this can happen surprisingly suddenly and early.
I thought: it is almost time. Time for softer clothes. Warmer clothes. Time to go down to the cellar and retrieve the weighted blanket. Time to begin adding layers again. And then it occurred to me: perhaps the bed needed layers too.
I made a few quick additions with things I already had. Nothing dramatic. Just more softness between my body and the hard surface beneath it. Almost immediately, some of the discomfort eased.
And I started thinking: Softness is an approach.
At first, I was thinking about the obvious forms of softness: a softer bed, a weighty blanket, clothes that feel gentle against the skin. But then I wondered where else softness might apply.
Recently, I have begun spending part of the weekend cooking food for the week. Not simply preparing something as quickly as possible because I need to eat, but actually cooking. Vegetables simmering. Flavors having time to deepen. Ingredients becoming tender. Even the food becomes soft.
I started to realize that the time I give to cooking is part of the recipe. Maybe softness has a recipe too. Time is one ingredient. Patience may be another. Attention. Warmth. Rest. Enough space for something to become what it is becoming without constantly demanding that it hurry up.
I started wondering what would happen if I applied this approach to other parts of my life: softness in how I approach my work; softness in how I move through the medical system, with its appointments, therapies, waiting rooms, and demands; softness in how I show up for other people; softness in how I respond to circumstances I cannot control; and, perhaps most importantly, softness in how I respond to myself.
This last part is difficult for me. I grew up in a household where softness was largely absent. There was very little physical affection. Criticism, on the other hand, was abundant. My parents criticized my choices and my interests. Even the people I chose to spend time with could become subjects of judgment.
Sharpness became familiar. When sharpness is what you know, softness can feel almost like learning another language. You have to practice it. You have to notice when you are speaking to yourself in the language you inherited rather than the language you are trying to learn.
That may be why something as ordinary as changing my bed could lead me here. The body sometimes understands an idea before the mind does. It tells us: this surface is too hard. Add another layer. Make this easier. Stop asking me to endure something simply because endurance is possible.
And that instruction does not have to stop at the edge of the bed.
We are living through a time saturated with division, anger, scarcity, and fear. Hardness is often presented as the appropriate response: protect yourself, toughen up, move faster, defend your position, hold your ground.
But what happens when we do something else? What if we begin with softness toward ourselves? What if we accept ourselves a little more, become more present, take our time, and allow ourselves to need comfort without immediately turning that need into a failure?
Softness does not mean that everything becomes easy. It doesn't mean surrendering our boundaries or pretending that painful things aren't painful. It means questioning whether hardness must always be our first response.
Yesterday, I thought I needed a new bed. Instead, I added a few layers. The season was changing outside my window. My body was asking for something different. And for once, rather than asking it to conform with what I had already decided, I listened.
This may be how change happens sometimes. Not in straight lines. Not in squares. But in circles that keep widening: from a mattress, to a blanket, to a pot of slowly cooking vegetables, to a body, to a life, to the way we meet one another. And then, eventually, back to ourselves.
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