I am struggling with my need for space. There are two distinct kinds that I am hungry for–actual physical space, clean and uncluttered, and space in my schedule, room in my way of doing things and being in the world. I feel like I did the best I could to clear out all of the things that no longer serve me, to do as Rumi suggests and “ignore those that make you feel fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.” One thing that helped me to do so was Derek Sivers and his suggestion of how to decide how to spend your time, how to decide when to say yes and when to say no.
And yet there’s still too much stuff, too much going on, too much smashing myself to bits, not enough rest or play or joy, not enough white space.
White space: Deliberate negative space, empty and yet surrounded and shaped so that it acquires a sense of volume or form, enclosed empty space which makes an essential contribution to the composition, the portion and place left unmarked, empty and unused and unoccupied, intentionally left vacant, the space between or around subjects, the blank space in the margins and at the edges, the unscheduled and unclaimed places on your calendar, separation, void, the area left open, the gap.
I long to clear space, to watch the magic unfold. And yet, I have old, sticky habits that are hard to break. And as hard as I’m working to keep my heart open, sometimes I still chose instead to be numb, to find comfort in disconnection and distraction. I fill my day up with doing, and at the end I feel tired and terrible about not having done what I should, not having done enough.
In her latest post, Happy Birthday to Me, Sunni Chapman suggests, “It’s the looking that hides the finding.” Maybe the trying and the doing aren’t the way to get anywhere after all, maybe there’s no need to change or become. Maybe it’s time to trust the wisdom of surrender, of letting go, of rest, of enough. As Sunni says,
No one has ever been lost, or incomplete. There is only this one seamless, gorgeous, chaotic, mad-wonderful, vivid as all-hell ALIVENESS, appearing as everything, everywhere, at all times. An infinitely full and incomprehensible mystery, that’s constantly shrouded in a super-chatty mind.
And jokester that life is… it’s not til’ the search is dropped,
that IT is finally found. Staring you in the face the whole time,
totally absurd and totally wonderful.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 