On the neglected spaces within us, and the quiet treasures they hold.
There is a house I sometimes dream of — old, sprawling, full of sunlight and dust.
Its front rooms are vibrant, worn in by laughter, filled with the predictable clutter of daily living. But beyond a narrow hallway, behind doors that stick when you try to open them, are rooms I rarely visit.
Rooms with heavy air and forgotten colors. Rooms I know, yet don’t.
In one dream, I stand at the threshold of one such room, heart beating a little too fast. I sense that something waits for me inside — not a monster, not a ghost, but something even more quietly unnerving: parts of myself I once abandoned. Dreams set aside. Griefs left ungrieved. Joys I deemed too fragile to protect.
I never cross the threshold in the dream.
But I always wake up with a strange kind of longing.
A sense that I have unfinished business with myself.
In life, we often live in the front rooms of our being — the selves that show up, perform, achieve, survive.
Meanwhile, in the back rooms, quiet voices wait.
Not to accuse us. Not to shame us.
Simply to be heard.
These rooms contain the child we once were, the artists we silenced, the tenderness we armored against a hard world.
And perhaps, they also hold the wisdom we keep searching for externally.
It is easier, sometimes, to avoid these inner spaces. They ask us to be still. They ask us to be unguarded. They ask us to sit with what we don’t immediately know how to fix.
But each room we dare to enter — even if only briefly, even if only with trembling steps — returns to us a piece of wholeness we didn’t know we had lost.
I wonder,
Which forgotten room in you is quietly calling your name?
What might you find, if you entered — without agenda, without judgment — simply to listen?
There is no need to rush.
No need to barge in.
Sometimes, it begins with just placing a hand on the door.
And saying —
I see you.
I will be back.
I have not forgotten you entirely.
Letters for the Inner Journey by Pushkar
