The Home First Designed in the Mind
After selling the apartment where we had lived for nearly a decade, a new cycle in our lives began. Closing that chapter was an important movement — not only in the physical sense, but internally as well. With the change came a quiet, natural question: “Where will the next home be?” And even before any concrete search began, it started to take shape within us.
As we began to consider the move, a very clear desire emerged: to live in a different kind of space — an apartment entirely with tiled floors, a spacious balcony enclosed with glass, located on a high floor with an open view and filled with built-in cabinets. We also imagined the details: square sinks in the bathrooms and, if possible, a storage room in the garage.
After the sale, we rented an apartment whose balcony faced a park — a living view of nature, with trees swaying in the wind. Although the building was somewhat older, the location was excellent, and we stayed there for a while. Even so, in our imagination, we continued “furnishing” the ideal apartment: I added electric blinds, expanded the space mentally, and we felt as if we were already living in a place that did not yet physically exist.
A few months later, the owner of the apartment we were renting asked for it back, as his wife wished to return there after not adapting to the other property they were living in. I asked for some time to look for another place that matched what was already clear within us. We visited several apartments, but none seemed to align with what we had envisioned. Something was always missing — the view, the flooring, the cabinets, or that quiet inner sense of “this is it.”
Then one day, unexpectedly, we received a call from someone in the administrative department of the real estate agency — someone who wasn’t even part of the team of real estate agents. She said that an apartment had just come onto the rental market that, according to her intuition, “had everything to do with us.” I asked to schedule a visit immediately.
When we arrived, the feeling was one of recognition. The apartment had tiled floors throughout, plenty of built-in cabinets, electric blinds, was located on a high floor, and had two balconies — and the owner mentioned that he had already hired a company to enclose them with glass the following week. Every detail matched what we had imagined — and felt — months earlier.
We left the visit with our hearts racing, and I immediately called to reserve the apartment. Shortly afterward, we learned that two other people had visited it and were extremely interested — one of them even offered to pay above the asking price to secure the lease on the spot. Still, the owner declined, saying he would wait for our decision since we had reserved it first.
A few days later, we were moving in. And when I walked into the apartment for the first time with the keys in hand, I felt the same sense of completeness I had felt months earlier while imagining every detail. Everything was exactly as we had envisioned — including the electric blinds, which at first had existed only in our imagination.
“When the feeling is genuine, the universe does not respond with effort — it responds with coherence.”
— Edmar Sasaki
Today I understand that this home was conceived long before it physically existed. Every image, every felt detail, served as a silent blueprint for what was to come. Nothing was coincidence — it was correspondence. And once again, what began in consciousness took form, space, and address.
O Sentimento é a Ponte