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Three am, or maybe five. Who knows what time it is, anyway? I go to the bathroom and suddenly the silence hits me. Maybe for some people it’s not an obvious silence, because there’s no real silence on a plane, with the noise of the engines, the opening and closing of the hatches, the trolley rolling around, a baby crying. Yes, a baby. Or rather, the lack of one. I can feel with every fiber of my being that there is no baby with me. My body is a little on alert and anxious. Something is missing. One hundred percent of my attention is focused on touch, touch, constant stimulation. And suddenly, in this bathroom, I’m washing my hands and thinking to myself that I’m alone. I’ve said surprisingly few words today. I don’t have to talk. I don’t have to say “sit down,” “don’t touch,” “put your pants on,” “flush the toilet,” “wash your hands,” “yes, you have to wash your hands,” “we’re not leaving if you don’t wash your hands,” “wait,” “don’t open the door, I still have to pee,” “wait,” “stand here,” “don’t touch,” “come on, don’t lick that,” “we’re leaving now”… I would probably say all that in a minute to a tired, irritated 4-year-old who is doing extremely well on a 9-hour plane trip. This time, I’m flying alone. Alone in my business class. No, just kidding, I don’t need business class, because flying across the ocean without a child is a level of luxury that no money, no credit card points can buy.

Silence. I can hear my own thoughts. It’s not even that no one is talking to me, but that I don’t have to say anything to anyone. What a peace. I start to accumulate words, thoughts. Stockpiling them for later. Is there such a thing as a daily word limit? I’m sure there are people who are limitless, but I’m not one of them. After a certain number of words, I simply don’t have any more left in me. I don’t like talking for the sake of talking. I’m not good at small talk and other pleasantries. And even if I were, I wouldn’t like it, I wouldn’t want to. I like to think before I say something. So now I sit in this silence and can’t help but marvel at how many unspoken words I’ve accumulated. How much energy I’ve saved! Well, I’ll have to do something with these words later. I think I’ll sit down and write a post.

I’m sitting and reading. I’m preparing a post about escaping capitalism. Reading philosophical texts, reviewing notes, looking for inspiration. It seems like everything is stress-free, without any pressure. I have this moment for myself and my work, the moment I’ve been waiting for since yesterday. The long-awaited moment has arrived, it’s happening here and now—I’m sitting in silence, I can read and write. It’s raining outside, I’m sitting at my desk, drinking tea, no one is home. The perfect time to delve into ideas, to contemplate, to create… and what? And nothing.

I was dreaming to have this time for myself, but my yesterday’s idea of what this moment would look like and what it is now are diametrically different. In my imagination, it was a moment I had been waiting for so long, my time for creation! A moment of ecstasy, of great emotions, an absolute moment. The desire for this silence and peace that would envelop me and guide me through the chaos of my thoughts, so that I could effectively put all my ideas on paper and do something beautiful in these two hours of free time… It’s not happening.

I am here, reading and writing, and I realize that none of the things I imagined are happening. I read and get distracted, so I have to read the same sentence several times. I write notes on a piece of paper, a little sloppily, a little incoherently. Nothing is happening. I haven’t written anything concrete yet. My thoughts are still scattered and I can’t quite grasp the thread. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be about. I’m not reaching my full potential, so I immediately feel guilty that now I’m finally here and WHY? Why can’t I live up to my ideal image of this moment? What am I doing? Why am I wasting time that is so precious? I have two hours to create and nothing is happening…

What do our ideas say about us? I miss the feeling of sitting down and just reading or writing without a plan, without pressure, without anything. That’s all. What is this memory about? About an activity or something else? Maybe it’s a memory of some carefree and frivolous time? When was the last time I knew how to rest? The real rest. Being 100% in the moment, completely relaxed, focused and at ease. That state when curiosity about the world awakens, creativity flows, time expands, memory is razor sharp, the world becomes more intense and more palpable. In this state, life is lived to the fullest. What I remember, what I imagine, is precisely this feeling. A feeling that used to come more easily, but today is increasingly difficult to achieve. A feeling that cannot be planned or written into the daily schedule, yet one that we strive for and desire so much. I abandon work on that post (on capitalism) to gather my thoughts…

This break, this moment of stepping away from the task and transferring my discomfort onto another piece of “paper”, without any prior plan, completely spontaneously and aimlessly, suddenly transports me into this space for a moment. When words come on their own, when thoughts stop buzzing in chaos, when I don’t need to look at my phone for distraction and to kill the discomfort, when something happens that wasn’t supposed to happen, but suddenly hatched and found an outlet in this piece…

I don’t remember when it started, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, open my eyes, look at the clock, and it’s 3 a.m. It took me a while, but I finally discovered that 3 a.m. is my time. Just me and myself, only for me.

At three a.m., there is silence, absolute silence. It’s just me and my undisturbed thoughts. At three a.m., worries, problems, and anxieties don’t come to me, only clarity. At this hour, my mind is as calm as nowhere else, and my thoughts are clear, bright, and surprisingly organized. Sometimes I wake up and suddenly I just know. Something that has been bothering and terrifying me for the last few days becomes completely simple. At 3 a.m., I could arrange arguments for my articles, answer questions about the meaning of life, love, work, come up with new theories, and make new resolutions. Because this hour is not for mundane things like “I don’t know what to cook for dinner.” It is about questions like ‘why do I always cook the same thing? Where has my creativity gone? Why doesn’t cooking give me as much pleasure as it used to?’. Because 3 a.m. is my conversation with myself, without chaos, without the endless rush of thoughts, stimuli and voices, without hesitation and fear. It’s my meditation, my space, I feel that at 3 a.m. I am most myself and at home, I don’t need anyone or anything, just me. And no, it doesn’t happen every day. Sometimes a few times a week, sometimes a few times a month. At first it was rare, until I realized the power and need I had, to be there. There, meaning at home and at peace with myself. Now when I wake up at night, I know that’s the reason.

Suddenly, in the midst of a beautiful thought that has just taken hold of my mind and is leading me towards another illumination, I hear the door opening downstairs and I know… I know that it’s over for today. Then, small steps stumping up the stairs and running towards the bedroom door. The patter of little feet very effectively ends my deliberations about the state of my soul. The door slams, little creature climbing into bed, and I automatically pull back the covers so that her icy feet can jump in and lie on my thigh (if all goes well) or straight on my stomach, which is soft and warm, giving me a shiver that runs through my whole body. And so it all ends, because I’m facing chaos again, I’m no longer alone, and it’s late anyway, so I need to fall asleep because in a few hours I have to wake up to life.

I write because my unblemished mind from 3 am told me to do so. I don’t have any grand motives or goals. I write to capture those moments when everything seems clear and simple, because I want to see if it can really be that way and if it can be translated/incorporated into a more tangible life. Can thoughts go beyond this strange meditative, liminal state of the 3 am? I decided to try…