I like to live life to the full. It is a passion of mine, a value of mine, both a pressure I put on myself and aspiration to which I try to live. For life is short and the world is huge and there is so very much to explore and experience. A life well lived is a Neon life, after all. For me this is a life of being fully connected to myself, to others and to the world around me, a life of authentic self-expression, one free — as much as is possible — of fear, routine, habit and expectation — and one that seeks out and experiences life in all its glory, and — inevitably — its ugliness. For all the colours on the spectrum are part of life, not just the “pretty” ones.
And that’s wonderful when those experiences are happening and we are living them or looking forward to them, or even recovering from them (in a satisfied, replete kind of way). But what about the spaces in between? What about those days, weeks or months (God forbid that it be years) when it is simply ‘ordinary’ and nothing in particular is happening? I find those periods incredibly difficult. I find myself sink a little and flounder quickly as my inner lights dim and my colours start to fade. I recognise it enough now to know that it is more a reflection of my inner world than it is of my outer life, and that there is no need to panic or rush for the next experience.; that these feelings are certainly not an indication of something needing to be fixed.
But the feelings come up nonetheless and I would be lying if I said they didn’t bother me. The last time they came to visit me was after the summer. As the dust settled on the adventure and fun of the summer season, and the transition to the darker months started to encroach, I noticed that although I had lots to look forward to, I was inhabiting the “space in between” and that it was creating discomfort in me, a profound kind of malaise that was gradually creeping in and eroding my sense of wellbeing. So this question of the “space in between” has been on my mind of late, and consequently has been popping up here and there, as things are want to do when you are tuned into them.
So it was that I heard my choir director a few weeks back talk to us about the ‘negative space’ in singing. She was exhorting us to curtail the note at the end of phrases, in order to create the space between the notes which, she was explaining, creates the contrast that makes the notes stand out when they return, like colour bursting from a page, shamelessly contrasting with the white space on the page. I hadn’t heard of the “negative space” concept before, and then I heard it used by a coachee when she was talking about her drawing class and this same idea of contrasting something with nothing.
It brings up for me that famous line of John Lennon’s that lodged in my frightened mind in my adolescence so many years ago: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. The idea that the ‘space in between’ is actually my life, terrifies me. And this is the case no matter how developed my ability to appreciate the simple things in life such as the smell of coffee in the morning, the sunlight shining through the window and dancing around the flat when I wake up, the turning of the trees in Autumn, and laughter with friends. And so I wrestle with the dilemma: do I continue to reach for the experiences or do I lean into the spaces in between and learn to find my feet more steadily in those times? I have no doubt that the binary choice I traditionally give myself, is not the answer and that both can be beneficial to my on-going growth. There may even be other options. But man, it’s hard. And I can feel myself moving towards Skyscanner and a flight to Africa, even as I write….