My Game

In my childhood, I used to play a game very frequently, which I thought was interesting only to me. It consisted of a very simple and repetitive action: I would turn off the light in my room, lie down on the bed, close my eyes, and try to stop thinking.

To stop thinking meant not just remaining silent inside my head, but stopping the flow of words, images, memories, and fantasies. I tried to reach absolute internal silence.

At first, it seemed impossible. Thoughts surfaced on their own: fragments of conversations from the day, melodies, worries, plans for tomorrow. But if you practice every evening, after a while you learn to catch that brief gap between thoughts. First for a second, then for two, then for five.

And in that gap, an amazing state occurred.

It felt like you were dissolving. The boundaries of your body disappeared. You didn’t feel the bed, didn’t hear background noises, didn’t feel time. There was only pure awareness of existence without content. Not “I think, therefore I am,” but simply “I am.”

Later, as an adult, I learned that this is called meditation, mindfulness, or practicing a quiet mind. People pay money for courses, read thick books, go to retreats, and spend years trying to achieve what a child in a dark room did simply out of curiosity.

The most interesting part is what happens after you come out of that state.

When you open your eyes and turn on the light, the world feels sharp, bright, and fresh. As if someone wiped dust off a window. Ordinary things — the sound of rain outside, the light of a street lamp, the texture of a blanket — suddenly regain their vividness and meaning.

I think children naturally know how to enter states that adults lose as they grow up. A child doesn’t need complex systems or philosophies to feel the depth of the world. They just need to turn off the light and remain silent for a moment.

Over the years, this “game” became harder. Adult life brings too much noise, responsibilities, and constant mental chewing. But every now and then, when the noise gets too loud, I still turn off the light, close my eyes, and try to find that quiet gap between thoughts.

Because sometimes the best thing you can do for your mind is to simply turn it off for a minute.