A Night to Reclaim Time for Doing Nothing by Looking at Photographs

Recently, when night falls, I have started picking up a photo book of landscapes from my bookshelf instead of my smartphone.
It was a habit that started by chance and on a whim, but before I knew it, that time had become essential to the end of my day.
That night, too, after returning home and taking a breather, I boiled water, poured hot tea into a mug, and sat down on the sofa.

When I turned on a small lamp and opened the photo book, it felt as if the sound of the wind and the scent of the places were drifting from beyond the pages.
What was lined up there were nothing but quiet landscapes.
An empty beach, morning light filtering into a forest, a train station platform waiting for a train, a residential area dyed in the colors of dusk.
Even though they are places I don't know, the reason I feel a sense of nostalgia might be because they overlap with the "favorite landscapes" within myself.
As I gaze at a world without sound, my breathing naturally deepens.
The tension in my shoulders fades, and my impatience and anxiety slowly recede.
It was a form of healing that required no words, somewhat similar to meditation.
The scenery captured in the photos is simply "there."
They weren't taken to be judged as beautiful or lonely.
Thinking that the person just wanted to capture that moment, in that place, makes my heart feel calm and still.
My eyes caught one particular photograph.

Above a meadow spreading at the foot of a mountain, a single house stands alone.
The color of the sky looked somewhat like the sky I saw as a child, and I suddenly remembered summer vacations from long ago.
The feeling of reading a book outside at my grandmother's house in the early afternoon while listening to the cicadas.
I feel like my heart was full back then, too, even though I wasn't doing anything.
There is no explanation for the photo.
But that is precisely why my imagination can expand, and I can embrace the empty space.
I thought that was somewhat similar to life.
When this photo was taken, what was the person behind the camera feeling?
What did they feel when looking at this scenery?
Such room for imagination seemed to quietly connect with the depths of my heart, and before I knew it, my hand stopped turning the pages.
I wonder when it was that I became unable to have this kind of "time for doing nothing."

If I open social media, information comes rushing in, and before I know it, both my eyes and my heart are tired.
But inside the photo book, there are no streams or notifications. There is only the scenery, just sitting there quietly.
Surely, a busy day will come again tomorrow.
With work and tasks piling up, I will be chased by them if I let my guard down.
Even so, just by having a night like this where I can open a photo book and face a quiet time, I can think, "I was able to take good care of myself today."
Looking at landscapes helps me reclaim myself.
The scenery seen through someone else's eyes gently puts my heart in order.
Such nights have become my recent reward.