How do you give a hurtful person less space in your mind?
In Windows into my soul, the speaker imagines his mind as a city rebuilt after conflict. Hurtful people once had a place there. Now there is peace, although ruins from the earlier time remain.
That last detail matters. The past has not been made harmless or erased. What has changed is how much room it has to govern the present.
When someone who hurt you is no longer in your life, their imagined response can still enter ordinary choices. You consider wearing something you like and hear the remark they would have made. Before leaving the house, you change. They did not speak today, yet the old judgment has helped decide today.
A Spark from This Is My Life
In calmness of mind is greatness.
You may have learned to anticipate those remarks when contact was frequent. Noticing the pattern now does not make you foolish for having it. It gives you a chance to ask whether the imagined response needs any part in this decision.
Do you dislike the clothes, or do you expect that they would? Is there a present concern to consider, or are you preparing for an encounter that will not happen? The answers need not make the memory vanish. They can help you separate your own preference from a familiar objection.
You might still choose something else. The useful change is that the decision can include what you actually think, rather than taking the absent person’s voice as its starting instruction.
What does returning to the argument do?
Remembering a harmful encounter can preserve important knowledge. It may help you explain what happened to someone trustworthy or recognise why you no longer want contact. You may still need time to grieve or understand why you are angry.
Repeatedly composing the reply that would finally defeat the person may do something different. If there is no useful conversation to have, another imagined exchange can leave you in the same place while taking time from the day you are living.
You can notice when that is happening and stop supplying the next line. Return to the person you are with, the meal you are eating or the choice in front of you. This is an available response, not a promise that the thought will stay away. It may return, and noticing it again need not become another occasion to judge yourself.
If the person still threatens you, has access to you or continues the harm, there are real circumstances to address. Practical protection and support matter more than trying to feel peaceful about an unsafe situation. Inner distance cannot make ongoing danger disappear.
For an ended relationship, you may also be able to reduce avoidable invitations back into it: checking for updates, rereading an exchange without a new purpose or asking mutual acquaintances what the person thinks of you now. Keep any records you need; you do not have to keep consulting them for an answer they have never supplied.
The poem’s peace belongs to a speaker who remembers the city’s history. It does not require forgiveness, renewed access or the claim that suffering was worthwhile. In an ordinary day, some of that distinction can appear when you make a choice without first arguing it before someone who is no longer there.
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AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
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