Yin and Yang of the Shopping Center

I will dedicate this text to shopping centers. Because the other day, by a game of (un)fortunate circumstances, I spent some time in one. To be honest – I avoid them.

It's always too much of everything for me there.

Too much light, too much noise, too much scents that are not real, too much artificial flowers, artificial materials, too much artificial everything. Not to mention too many people. And I am always surprised anew that the parking lots are regularly full, during the week, on weekends. And I ask myself, how much time do people spend shopping? Do they know that the sun is outside? What time of day it is at all... Because in them it is never night, and I am a person who loves both day and night. Who from the chatter and hurry prefers silence and slowing down. Fresh air. Everything that is natural.

If I look deeper, in the shopping center everything pulses with the same rhythm: music, climate, lights. Everything is precisely designed to keep you, stimulate, attract you. Obviously there is some mistake in me because it only tires me. So if I really must I rather buy less often, slowly, and with taste. I like when the store has a soul, when the clothes are neatly folded, when the space breathes and when I am greeted by the smell of wood, not plastic.

And I like outlet centers in the open more. If it's about clothes I like to go to some shopping mecca and make an outing of the purchase. And in my city I like markets more where the seller knows where his products come from. And then we chat a little about everything. I also like when around the shop greenery grows, when plants are not decor, but living beings that change the space. I like when shopping is not an escape, but – an experience.

And imagine then the irony of life – that I unintentionally ended up in a shopping center. Business, of course.

I had an hour and a half “hole” between meetings, far from home, with an emptied mobile phone and waiting for my husband where we agreed that we would meet.

Without a goal, without a list for shopping, only advertisements and some monotonous music.

And while I was walking like that, without intention to buy anything, I caught myself observing people.

Some with bags, some with coffee, some lost in shop windows.

And I thought: how much actually all of us seek the same. Not a thing, but a feeling. Not a discount, but – belonging.

And just then I saw one small plant in the corner of the cafe. A real, live one. Someone obviously forgot to water it, but it was, defiantly, still standing. Green. Brave. It then got water and continued to defy everything that it is not. I thought: there, life breaks through even where everything is artificial. Always.

Maybe that is why that moment touched me so much. Because, although personally I choose the forest instead of the center, nature instead of concrete, my life has been intertwining with that world for years through – my husband's job. His is the world of technology, systems, structure.

My world is feeling, breath, nature. Seemingly different, but – perfectly complementary.

Through the years we have joined these two sides. He digitizes, I humanize. He measures, I feel. He creates solutions and tools, and one new modern world. I return that world to nature and the true one. Like yin and yang.

And the result? Incredible balance. He managed to make the technology warm. Digital – alive. And I learned that even data can have a soul, if we know what to do with them. If we use them to understand – and not to control.

So today, when I enter a shopping center, I no longer look at it with the same eyes. I see possibility. I see a space that can breathe. A center that can become a living place – of meetings, experiences, meaning. Because shopping centers do not have to be only places of sale, but also places of connecting. Places where technology serves the person, and not the opposite.

And there somewhere, between neon and candles, between data and experience, between me and him – a new story is being born. About balance. About centers that do not sell – but tell stories. About digital that does not stifle, but enriches. About nature that always returns us to what we are.

Because everything that is valid in business, is valid in life too: the point is not to choose between technology and nature, between order and chaos, between mind and heart. The point is – to find balance.

That is our yin and yang. That is me. And so when life again “by a game of (un)fortunate circumstances” takes me to a shopping center – I know that I have not gotten lost. I see a world that needs to breathe and connect.