Allie, ever since moving into her own space, had felt a steadily-growing panic that was not just the neck pain she had from sleeping on the bare floor every night. While still with her parents, she could have blamed them for the lack of furniture in their house, but now — living alone — it was all on her to summon it, and she was just as unsuccessful.
She had only met a few people who were able to do it. Once, on a school trip, she visited an enclave where she experienced the softness of a bed for the first time: invisible, so she had to feel around the room for it, but it remained in her mind the only night she had truly experienced rest and comfort. Apart from the enclave, whose residents must have worked very hard and tirelessly to produce the imagined furnishings around them, she had only ever met a few people who could do it.
One morning, as she awoke to the sunlight streaming, she realized that she had had enough. Comfort just wasn’t real. And yet those moments of contact with it through the imagined furniture were so unnervingly tangible. She didn’t know how to resolve this.
In the middle of breakfast that day, a knock at the door drew her attention. As she approached the front of her home, she saw a traveler standing there wearing a traveling cap and a cloak that billowed in the morning breeze. His shoes seemed to quiver as he walked, perhaps with something that the breeze or the grass teased that she couldn’t quite see.
“I’ve come to see Allie?” the traveler said. “Someone told me that you have a spare room.”
“Oh! Yes!” She had forgotten that the innkeeper had died earlier that year, so the small town had nowhere to put people for the moment. “Come on in.”
As they entered the barren living room, Allie’s gaze fell on the empty space. She couldn’t help but express her deep regret. “Unfortunately, I’m not good at imagining furniture. Please forgive the emptiness.”
The traveler put his hand on her shoulder “Allie, don’t apologize. This may seem strange, but where I come from, we don’t rely on imagined furniture. We build furniture from materials around us, like wood, stone, and textiles. It simply isn’t a skill one can expect from everyone.”
Allie’s curiosity was piqued. She studied the traveler. “So … the things I have heard described, you build those? You use those likenesses and make them from materials? Isn’t that bad for you?”
He nodded. “With human hands, you can shape and craft furniture that enhances your experience of the space. It will help you focus on what really matters — connection, joy, and love. True comfort.”
With gratitude in her heart, she thanked the traveler for his wisdom. His stay was brief, but he promised to write to her and send her books with information on how to do the building she needed. Allie waited for weeks with excitement until she received the box from him, and she immediately set to work.
The first things she built were benches and chairs, and then she built a table. Each piece helped her grow in her skill, and she found a special delight in selecting what worked for each type of space in her home. Bedrooms could not have harsh furniture — to create comfort, they needed to be soft and supple. These distinctions between uses had never been obvious to her before, not even when visiting the imagined furnishings enclave in her childhood.
By the second year from the traveler’s visit, she had created enough furniture to have a comfortable home. Her parents marveled in the plushness of the couch and the ease with which they fell asleep on the mattress in the spare room. They told their friends about the wonders in their daughter’s home and how easy it was to relax there, and soon people came to her to study how to make furniture of their own.
Always, at the beginning of her instruction, she thanked the traveling teacher. Although he had never given his name, the care and consideration he had shown her made her feel blessed in a way she had never thought possible. While there were people who resented her — at one point, creating physical furniture had been illegal, as it was seen as being a replacement for the true ideals of comfort and usability that could not be purely physical — many more believed in the wisdom of her approach. The world was changing, and she was at the forefront of that transformation, well-rested, connected to comfort every day, and ready for the future.
I hope you have enjoyed this overmuch, heavy-handed, and slightly cringe allegory — I was thinking about a text I read where someone was apologizing for having idols and over-explaining why it wasn’t idolatry. Have a great week. 😊
KALLISTI 