dead-space-free

First, I looked it up to find out what it means in relation to valves: dead space-free valves prevent contamination in the valve. Without question, definitely useful. Nothing gets stuck or left behind in an object free of corners and edges. Nothing undesirable can form there.

And every so often, the anthropomorphism in me paused, gazing into space & time, and asked:
What kind of existence is this? When dead space, like a human being, fulfills its purpose but then there’s nothing more? Because everything simply passes through it. Just a shell. With no possibility of change, because nothing can settle there.

So what if this dead space were liberated? If it could suddenly fold and wrap itself. If other life could settle or even accumulate in it. It could experience life and tell stories. It would be free. Free from this emptiness. Free to fill itself, whether for a short or long time.

Just like us humans. We experience and we feel. Only in this way are we more than mere objects for our environment. Our feelings settle within us like visitors at a rest stop and tell us this and that before moving on. Or they set up camp; then it is up to us to ask them to continue their journey. Ideally, before they contaminate us with whatever they accumulated and take up too much of our free space, our joy then dying.

Finding this balance with our visitors is basically a lifelong dance, a game that is always somehow new, because every visit is a little different. But that is precisely the adventure of our everyday life, of our lives, and it complements our purpose with a meaning that is entirely our own.

What would we be without the nooks and corners in which our lives take place? No matter how exhausting and nerve-wracking it is at times, because otherwise there would be nothing left of us as an individual. Fortunately, then, that we are free of dead space.

_{(translated with deepL & modified by myself)}