CHOOSING SPACE
Anyone else have that fear within them, that if you’re not doing enough, you’re not being useful?
For instance that actions like working, planning, dreaming, building connections, exercising, organizing…are the only activities which amount to anything: activities that allow us to see and touch and understand in the moment.
“Working” for me, amounts to a sort of tangible gratification.
I go in. I do the job. I receive monetary compensation which allows me to do important tasks, like pay my rent. So I pay my rent and save and spend, and by doing so I feel accomplished in one small way. It’s much harder to measure the impact, for instance, of finally reading that book on my dresser. If the book is complicated, then it might take extra time to grasp and might make me feel inadequate for not comprehending its larger meanings. Likewise if it’s made of marshmallow fluff then I might get frustrated afterwards that I shouldn’t have picked it up in the first place! Placing importance on activities that have the potential to lead to (but not the promise of) initiating growth or creativity or reflective states, can be quite a difficult thing.
Growth itself is a funny nugget to crack, because it’s neither linear nor does it care when it starts and stops.
Recently I’ve had more opportunities to step back and evaluate whether I feel balanced in my life.
Time for work and time for play is seemingly more even now, but I wonder where all my space has gone…
Do you ever stop and realize that you missed your surroundings changing? (Wait, but did you pause to watch the leaves twirl and spiral down with the wind?) And yet, making time for those moments doesn’t inherently open opportunities or guarantee a feeling of accomplishment.
It’s so easy to disregard the value of “having space” over “doing and accomplishing” because there’s rarely a concrete product that comes out of choosing to “have space”…but wow, are peace and stillness so crucial to balance. Whenever I get too overwhelmed, I try to remember that life isn’t made up of the big things: the big goals met or trips taken or any of that. Life is made up of in-betweens, like listening to new music while commuting to your job, lazy mornings spent chopping up fruit on the counter, random decisions that lead you somewhere, or meeting accidental friends!
All of that goes back to “choosing space”.
How can I expect to really live, and live thoughtfully, without leaving time to process?
How can I expect to make impromptu decisions if my entire day is sketched out ahead of me?
The answer is, you can’t.
You have to give yourself time to wander.
Whether that means wandering emotionally or spiritually, or quite literally wandering on foot.
It’s easy to consume. It’s easy to do.