Space

 By Joe Schaffer  

Space means the same thing between your teeth or between one galaxy and the next. It's exactly the same for being close to someone or being far — still space.

Space can be real tricky. About the time you think you've finally earned some, you don't have enough. I thought I'd have more space when I got my own bed. My own room. My own house. Now I can walk into the middle of a 100,000-acre wilderness and have
too little space.

Or I can try to talk to my spouse and have too much.

Some people think they can buy space. Car makers sell packages in ever increasing dimensions for people who think space comes in a metal and glass container.

K-Mart advertises space savers and space makers. Why doesn't Timex advertise time savers and time makers?

The one of spades is a space, isn't it?

Space can be divided. Not added, subtracted or multiplied. Only reallocated. We can't make it go away or get bigger. As with time, we all have the same amount. Money, power, ingenuity, thoughtful consideration, luck and human nature jostle the dividing lines but don't change the amount of space.

Measured in microns or light years, space wraps its arms around everything, through the earth, through our cultures and into our mitochondria and beyond.

Pages all have the same space. Not all pages say the same thing. It seems hard for most of us to know what our page says. We often seem not to pay the notion much mind, until running out of space.

One thing is certain about space: Stuff will accumulate to fill it.