The aria’s lingering note that keeps us hanging, the lovers eyes that speak in silence, the sunset’s sigh that baths us in warmth – it’s the stillness that brings us home to ourselves.
We all need that breath of space, that in between that connects us to who we are, and yet it’s often a scary place to enter, afraid of what we might find there. Aren’t we more often than not always trying to fill it?
Count me among the guilty. Now with the window to the world at our fingertips with our phones, isn’t it more intriguing to transport ourselves to another place or take a peek at everyone else’s life rather than being fully present to our own?
Athletes are great demonstrators of the space in between, with their breath. They’re trained to take a deep inhale, exhale, right before performing the impossible; centering themselves, tapping into all the energy that they are.
In the arts, Michelangelo’s legacy of works saw what was already there in the space in between. As a subtractive sculptor, he patiently pursued a stone that spoke to him, then rather than trying to fill it with a masterpiece, he used a mallet and chisel to free a figure from the marble block.
I confess, penning this prose has been cathartic in returning me to my personal space of in between. With this IF project I spent so long living with and listening to my thoughts, and now that it’s something tangible I’ve been focusing on filling every part of it with “just what’s needed,” when my intent was to share what comes up and get curious about it as I go.
Time to pause with a deep breath so I can fully appreciate the abundance of each moment. In doing so there is space for joy to enter to fill me up.
Takeways:
Wishing you a day where you feel a brief moment of space in between it all.