Space, the final frontier
Last writing hour of the week starts 9am, then we're back again next Tuesday after the bank holiday.
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”
— Joseph Campbell
There is a strange kind of power in emptiness, although most of us have been trained to treat space as something that needs to be filled as quickly as possible.
We fill the diary, the wardrobe, the kitchen table and the tiny gaps between one thought and the next, until every part of life is packed, claimed, colour-coded or quietly colonised by other people’s needs.
And then we wonder why we feel so tired.
We often imagine that energy will come from adding something new, whether that is a better plan, a brighter goal, a more exciting project, a new routine or, obviously, a very attractive notebook. But sometimes energy returns not because we add more, but because we take something away.
This bank holiday feels like the perfect time to practise making space, not in a dramatic, “new life by Tuesday” sort of way, but in the much gentler form of leaving a few things beautifully blank.
I am planning two hikes into the wilds of the Northumberland hills, where I hope to see almost no one, apart from perhaps a sheep with strong opinions and a wind that has absolutely no interest in my to-do list.
I do not want the walks to be useful, productive, impressive or part of a personal improvement project. I just want sky, grass, breath, legs, silence and that quiet inner unclenching that happens when the world gets bigger and your problems remember they are not, in fact, in charge of everything.
Because space is not nothing. Space is room.
It is room to breathe, room to hear yourself think, room to let your nervous system stop clutching its pearls, and room for the next idea, the next feeling or the next version of you to appear without having to elbow its way through the clutter.
This weekend, perhaps energy does not come from doing more, trying harder or squeezing one more meaningful activity into the bank holiday like a determined woman packing a Ryanair cabin bag.
Perhaps it comes from leaving something empty on purpose.
Prompt:
Where in your life are you craving more space, and what is one small thing you could leave beautifully blank this weekend?
Want to create a writing practice? Come join us at Heart Leap.
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