A Clean, Well-lighted Place
and Learning to Be That for Myself
A Clean, Well-lighted Place is my favourite short story by Ernest Hemingway. I resonated with the older waiter in the story, especially when he recites the Bible, but replaces all the important nouns and verbs with nada, which means “nothing” in Spanish.
When the world is just “nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada,” the old bartender resorts to a clean well-lighted café, where he felt at peace with himself.
I was recently reading my old diary, and there was an entry about a friend, and I wrote that he is my clean, well-lighted place. At the time, I was going through a rough patch, and that made it really difficult for me to be at peace with myself.
When we first met, I had just moved to Seoul from Hong Kong after graduation, and he had just moved here from New York for work. We had this conversation about how everything felt so overwhelming before leaving, and how it felt like it was really time to leave everything behind for a fresh start. Ever since we left, we started to miss that place — the connections we made there, the life we had there, and how it felt like an integral part of ourselves was built there. But we knew we wouldn’t go back, because we had moved on.
After that conversation, I felt weirdly drawn to him. Talking to him felt like talking to an old friend. Or like looking into a mirror. So, when something difficult happened in life, I thought I could talk to him about it. And so I did. When I did, he didn’t say much. He just hugged me and held my hand while I cried. It felt warm. I felt like I showed him my worst and he accepted me for who I was. In my journal, I wrote, “Maybe a clean well-lighted place is a person, because I don’t think a place could have that effect on me.”
I suddenly felt scared, because I was planning to move to London soon, and leaving Seoul meant I would be leaving that person who became a clean, well-lighted place for me. Because although we’re just friends, I felt a real connection. I was scared of what the older waiter called nada — the uncertainty, confusion, and meaninglessness — that leaving “the place” behind would bring again. And I also wanted to be there for him; I didn’t want to leave, because I felt like he was afraid of the same thing. I always felt an overwhelming sympathy and compassion for him because I saw myself — my hurt inner child — in him.
And I’m not a very spiritual person, but I think I was manifesting my fear in some way, because he disappeared. Now I really had to let go. It was even more difficult to let go, because as much as I resented him for disappearing, I understood exactly why he had to retreat: the overwhelming feeling of having to prove himself to others, and even to himself.
I think I’ll never forget that feeling of being completely understood without judgment. And every time I read this short story, I’ll think of him. But I think what Hemingway really wanted to say is that you should find that in yourself. You should learn to be that clean, well-lighted place for yourself. That’s what it means to feel whole. Being there for yourself even if nobody fully sees you. And it might sound nihilistic, but nobody can fully see you, even the ones who love you the most, even with mutual respect and good communication, because at the end of the day, you’re two different people.
Hemingway writes, “What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.”
Providing that cleanness and order for yourself when you’re met with fear or dread is when you finally feel whole. And after I’m whole, I would finally be able to be provide the same cleanness and order, something warm and gentle, for the ones I love, fully, with consistency and no judgment.