The Secret Space Where Everything Changes | B1-B2 English Listening Practice

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[00:00:06]Hello and welcome to Coffee English.

[00:00:09]Today I want to ask you one question.

[00:00:12]Think about the last time you felt completely like yourself.

[00:00:17]Not the you that goes to work. Not the you that takes care of the house or the family. Not the you that solves problems and answers messages. just you, the real you. Where were you? For many people, the answer is not home and not work. It is somewhere else. A small cafe, a park, a library, a corner of the city where nobody knows your job or your problems.

[00:00:46]A place where you are just a person, just yourself.

[00:00:51]That place has a name. Today we are going to find it together.

[00:01:01]Every person has two main places in their life. The first place is home.

[00:01:07]This is where you sleep, where you eat, where you are with your family. At home, you are a parent or a child or a partner. You have a role here. The second place is work. This is where you spend many hours every day. At work, you are an employee or a manager or a teacher. You have a role here too. These two places take most of your time, most of your energy, most of your life. And many people go from home to work, from work to home every day, again and again, in a circle that never stops. But scientists who study happiness found something important.

[00:01:52]People who only have two places are often not very happy. They feel tired in a way that sleep cannot fix. They feel like something is missing and something is missing. The third place. In 1989, a man named Ray Oldenberg wrote a book. He spent many years studying one simple thing. Where do people go when they are not at home and not at work? He looked at cafes, parks, libraries, small shops, barber shops, places where people just came and sat and talked. And he understood something important.

[00:02:33]These places are not extra. They are not a luxury for people with free time. They are necessary like food, like sleep, like water. He called these places third places.

[00:02:46]The third place is the place between home and work. The place where you are not your job and not your role. Where you are simply yourself.

[00:02:56]And he said without this place something in a person goes quiet. Something important. Something that cannot be replaced by anything else. Let me describe a third place. And as I describe it, I want you to listen to your body. Does something recognize this? You walk in, the place feels warm.

[00:03:20]Nobody needs something from you right away. Nobody is waiting for you to do a job. You sit down and slowly something happens. The worker in you sits down.

[00:03:31]The parent in you sits down. The problem solver in you sits down. And someone else stands up. You just you without the roles.

[00:03:41]Time moves differently here. One hour does not feel like one hour stolen from work. It feels like one real hour, one honest hour, one hour actually lived.

[00:03:55]And when you leave, you feel a little lighter, a little more like yourself.

[00:04:00]This is the third place. Maybe you know this feeling. Maybe you felt it before and did not know its name. Now you know.

[00:04:09]Here is something interesting from history.

[00:04:13]The greatest ideas in human history did not come from offices. They did not come from meetings or classrooms or formal work. They came from third places. In London 300 years ago, there were coffee houses. People came to drink coffee and talk. Scientists talked with writers.

[00:04:36]Artists talked with merchants. Nobody was working. Nobody had a meeting. They just talked. And in these coffee houses, some of the most important ideas in science and art were born. In Vienna 100 years ago, there were famous cafes.

[00:04:55]Writers, musicians, and thinkers all went to the same cafes. They talked for hours. They knew each other from the cafe, not from work. And from those conversations came some of the most important ideas of the modern world. In Paris, in Harlem, in Florence, again and again, in every place where humanity made a big step forward, there was a third place behind it. A cafe, a park, a simple room where people could just be people. The great ideas did not come from work. They came from the space between.

[00:05:36]But here is the problem. The third place is disappearing. Not all at once.

[00:05:42]Slowly, quietly, over many years.

[00:05:46]Cities changed. Small cafes closed.

[00:05:50]Parks became parking lots. The little bookshop on the corner is gone now. The place where neighbors used to talk for hours is closed or empty. And work changed, too. Work now follows us home.

[00:06:05]It is in our phones. It is in our evenings. The line between the first place and the second place is gone. They are the same place now. And then the internet came and people thought this is the new third place. We can meet online.

[00:06:22]We can talk online. We can be ourselves online.

[00:06:27]But something did not work because online you are always performing. You are always showing a version of yourself. You are never just sitting in a chair being nobody in particular.

[00:06:41]The real third place needs real air, real light, real other people who can actually see you. And when this disappears, something happens to people.

[00:06:52]They become lonely even when they are surrounded by other people. They become tired even when they sleep enough. They feel like something is missing. But they cannot say what the missing thing is.

[00:07:07]The third place. In 2023, doctors in America said something surprising. They said that loneliness is now a health problem like smoking, like bad food, like no sleep.

[00:07:22]Half of all adults in America feel lonely. Not alone. Lonely. Even people with families, even people with jobs, even people with full phones and busy lives. And the same thing is true in many countries around the world. Why?

[00:07:42]Because people lost their third place.

[00:07:45]They lost the informal, easy, simple contact with other people that used to happen naturally.

[00:07:52]Not deep relationships, not best friends, just the regular low pressure contact of being in the same place as other people who are simply there. The neighbor you see in the park every morning. The person who sits in the same cafe corner as you. The regular customers in a small shop who recognize your face. These small connections seem unimportant, but they are the fabric of belonging. And when they disappear, something disappears with them.

[00:08:28]Something that feels from the inside like a quiet empty space that is hard to name. Now I want to go one step deeper because the third place is not only a physical location. It is also something inside you. Think about the moments when you feel most like yourself. Not at a specific place in a specific state. A state where the roles are quiet and the real you is present.

[00:08:58]Some people find this in walking. Not fast walking with headphones and a goal.

[00:09:04]just walking, looking at things, being nowhere in particular.

[00:09:09]Some people find it in reading, not reading for work, reading for the pleasure of being inside a different world for a while. Some people find it in making something with their hands, cooking, drawing, gardening, something where the hands are busy and the mind is free.

[00:09:29]Some people find it in music, playing, listening, losing themselves in sound.

[00:09:36]And some people, maybe you find it here in this kind of listening, in a voice that speaks simply and honestly about real things in the feeling of being a person among ideas without needing to do anything with them right now. This is also a third place, not a building, a state, a quality of presence. And this quality practiced enough becomes something you can carry with you everywhere.

[00:10:07]Ray Oldenberg described what a good third place looks like. Let me tell you in simple words. First, it is free or very cheap. If you need to pay a lot to be there, it stops being a third place.

[00:10:22]It becomes a transaction.

[00:10:25]Second, you go regularly. The magic is not one visit. The magic is many visits over time becoming a familiar face.

[00:10:34]Feeling at home. Third, you can talk or you can be silent. Both are fine. Nobody expects you to perform.

[00:10:44]Fourth, it feels light, not serious and heavy. There is room for humor, for conversations that go nowhere in particular.

[00:10:54]And fifth, there are regulars. People who return, people whose faces you know, even if you do not know their names, people who share without words a small piece of ordinary life with you. This last thing is more important than it sounds.

[00:11:12]When someone in a third place sees your face and nods, something simple happens.

[00:11:18]They say without words, I see you. You are here. You belong here. Not because of your job, not because of your family, just because you are here. That is not a small thing. For many people, it is the only place in their week where they hear that message. Now, let us bring this close to you, to your English. Where do you usually study English?

[00:11:44]Maybe at home in your first place with all the noise of home life around you.

[00:11:50]Maybe at work in short breaks in your second place with all the pressure of work in the air. In both places, you carry the weight of your roles. You are always also the worker or the parent or the person who should be doing something more useful right now. What if you found a third place for your English? A real place, a cafe, a park, a library corner, a place where you go just for this, just to listen, just to be a curious person in the world. And think about this too.

[00:12:27]Coffee English can be your third place.

[00:12:30]Not a classroom, not a test, a familiar voice. You return to a space where you are not performing or proving anything.

[00:12:40]Just here, just listening, just yourself.

[00:12:44]Every time you come back, you practice something important. The practice of being present without a role. The practice of the third place, that practice matters more than the grammar.

[00:12:58]It makes the grammar possible.

[00:13:00]Here is the deepest thing I want to say today. At first, the third place is a location, a cafe, a park, a library. But over time, something changes.

[00:13:13]The people who seem most alive, most calm, most present in the world have something in common. They carry the feeling of the third place with them everywhere.

[00:13:25]They can be in the middle of work and still have a moment of just themselves.

[00:13:31]They can be at home with all the noise and still find a moment of simply being present. They do not need the physical cafe anymore. They have the cafe inside them. This does not happen quickly.

[00:13:46]First, you need the real place, the real park bench, the real quiet corner. These are where you practice.

[00:13:54]But slowly with enough practice, the quality of the third place, the lightness, the freedom from role, the simple presence with what is real right now begins to travel with you. And when it does, something changes. You become less the role, more the person, less the job title, more the human being, less defined by what you do, more defined by who you are.

[00:14:22]This is not a small change. It is actually very big and it starts with one small decision to find the place where you are simply yourself and go there.

[00:14:34]When did you last visit your third place, not the idea of it, the real place. If the answer is yesterday or last week, you already understand something important. You already know without this name that you need this space. If the answer is months ago or years ago or I am not sure I have one, then something has slowly disappeared from your life. Not dramatically, quietly. As life got busier and the roles [clears throat] got heavier and the space between home and work got smaller and smaller until one day there was almost no space left and something went quiet in you. That quiet is the third place waiting. It has not disappeared. You have not lost it. You have just not visited for a while. And places you have not visited for a while are still there, still waiting, still open. You just have to walk through the door again. Home, work, and the space between. The third place is not extra.

[00:15:44]It is not for people with free time. It is not a luxury. It is a need like sleep, like food, like the feeling of being seen by another person.

[00:15:56]It is the place where the great ideas of history were born. In coffee houses and parks and simple rooms where people could just be people. It is the place where you stop being your role and start being yourself.

[00:16:12]Find it or return to it this week. Not when things are calmer now. Because the roles will always be there when you return. But you just you without the rolls is something that needs a place to live. Give it one. Thank you for being here with Coffee English today. You were in a third place today right here. Just you and a voice and an idea. I hope it gave you something real. Until next time, find the place where you are simply yourself and go there. See you in the next episode.