Things acquire value when they are chosen, they make sense when they are used and they are beautiful when they are where they should be.

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An invisible thread connects the fingers with the heart. You don’t believe me? Try it. Grab an object from the thousands that surround you (one that you feel special, for some reason) and see what happens. It is not magic or esotericism. Oriental minimalists and western experts recommend the same method: touch things to know if the thread that connects the fingers to the heart tenses.
Does that lamp or watch or that doll radiate joy? It’s no secret that there are special objects. I once read that in a family home with four members there can be up to three hundred thousand different objects if we count books, pens, teaspoons, socks or swabs. But in that material crowd only a few have a unique meaning: if a press tycoon would have given away his entire empire in exchange for the ramshackle sledge he had when he was a child (in Citizen Kane, the millonaire’s last word is "Rosebud" and that was the name of his favorite toy) I am not ashamed to confess that in every flea market I visited I had the fantasy of finding myself with the old clown with whom I slept as a boy. Things acquire value when they are chosen, they make sense when they are used and they are beautiful when they are where they should be. The Japanese thinker Hideko Yamashita says that the choice of things implies "becoming aware" of oneself: the objects we use say about them as much as they say about us. That's why, in my world, the baby-lamp is so important that when it comes on it causes a slight sensation of terror, like those I had when I was a kid watching "scary movies", or the electric vaporizer that creates a home atmosphere with only the aroma of a cedar although the walls are bare and the books, in boxes. Try it because it works. There are objects that just by touching them give a tittle pull to that thread and wake up something asleep. The fingers act and the heart is lit: it’s the soul of things.

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