e.third space

(unfortunately didn't hit the word count but it's ok...)

It’s not too difficult to talk, frustratingly profusely, about something you like. That’s what essays are for. To talk today, I wonder, valiantly, with innate and complete purpose, which interest of mine will be poured out from the ever-changing mental jug of train-of-thought liquid, splishing and sploshing in ferventness.

In this moment what catches my fingers is the topic of the third space. On a whim, surely. I feel a certain fixation on the number three.

Currently, I sit in the library. I find a strangely self-fulfilling value in dragging along my $6 coffee, my sticker-slathered laptop, locating an excellent spot smack in the middle of the building and putting my legs up onto the coffee table. I was possessed by such audaciousness that I even crossed my legs and allowed my back to slouch. It’s been three hours of doing exactly what I would’ve done at home. What is the benefit of a third space?

I say, I am grateful to have found a good public place to relax. Bring a headset, wear an outfit that is only stylish in the first brief moments one sees it (then, it descends to the status of a fashion abomination), lay on your chair like you own the world, and work. Or pretend to work. I find happiness in that my hard labor is being perceived, perhaps. Among these people whom I will never know, to whom I will never feel a social obligation, I feel a weirdly great comfort.

Is it the human instinct to show off that makes third spaces so appealing? There’s a different type of happiness derived from accomplishing tasks where the world can see you versus where it can’t. Nobody knows what you’re working on, whether or not you are writing a college paper or a useless essay about third spaces, but they’ll still see that you have dedicated yourself to some sort of task. Or, if you’re a different type of person, they’ll see that you have given up on any type of accomplishment, choosing instead to lounge aimlessly in your seat. But that is its own type of dedication, and who would dare to find true fault in someone they have only ever merely observed from a distance? No matter what you do, you attain a purpose, a reason for being in a third space, a reason for dragging yourself all the way there. You wanted to show something to the world, and you succeeded.

It refines the argument that humans are not solitary, in this case specifically, because the main point furthered is that one takes pleasure in their third space due to the fact that they are happy to be perceived when there is no social responsibility or duty attached. From such a disconnected place, the only ‘you’ that others will see is the one that you choose to show. Gaining this sort of power is refreshing in a world where others are quick to form their opinions on you, not realizing that you are just a fleshy mass of unlimited thought, emotion, and potential.

Libraries in specific have a pleasant aura. There is a kindness to the spirits of books, masses of stories, that watch over you while you work to move your own story forward. There’s a good moral to be taken from this observation. In this way, the library itself holds a certain symbolic meaning. It’s a good place to work, or to pretend to work, to lounge, or to simply be.