Outer Space

This exercise requires 15-30 seconds of your time. If you don't have 20 seconds of time, you have work to do. Stop reading, and start prioritizing.

For those of you who DO have a quarter of a minute, please read:

Put the phone down, close the computer, rest your feet on the floor and free your hands. Take three deep breaths. Do not rush. Feel the outline of your body, as though someone was tracing it in chalk. Just feel your own edges. Maybe it will feel like a vibration, a tingling. Maybe you will only feel relaxed or perplexed (what is she asking me to do????), but stick with it for 10 seconds. Really try to feel where "you" end, and the next object "begins."

The space we create around ourselves is almost a tangible object in and of itself. Notice the space around you at present. Literally take 10 seconds to do this (yes, EVERYONE has 10 seconds...do it while you pee!), and feel the emptiness or the void that surrounds you. (To use "void" and "pee" in the same sentence just seems fitting.)

There is more power there than we realize, and it's sometimes the space that we create inside of our minds, hearts, and bodies that heals. Time is nothing but space, correct? It's a construct of our minds that measures space between now and then, or now and tomorrow. Space is necessary to create, to mend, and to eliminate.

When I was young, I had an obsession with outer space. I loved the planets, solar systems, constellations, anything involving space. The librarians at my elementary school were at a constant loss to find me new books on space at my reading level, and so I'd just keep checking out the same books in a self-mandated rotation.

This all came to a halt when one day, when I went to my mother with a question. She was drying her hair in her bathroom. It's so vivid a memory, I can remember the smell of her perfume and can trace my steps. "Mom," I asked, "if you go beyond the Earth, and the planets, and the solar system, and you just keep going, what's there?"

Now, as a precocious child, my mother was used to answering all sorts of questions(and kudos to her, she always answered honestly and with sincere interest), but this was a young child's introduction to infinity, the concept of "void," and one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

She didn't even turn the blow dryer off. "More galaxies," she said. And I retorted with "And after that??? Where does it stop???"

It was futile. I was clearly insatiable (still am), and if it was between a partially-dry head of hair to amuse my never-ending curiosity, or looking presentable and giving me an abbreviated truth, she wisely chose the latter. "If you think about that, you will lose your mind."

Obviously, Mom had no answer. And if Mom had no answer, NO ONE had an answer. This is a woman who would explain binary code to her kids while in the cereal isle, and yet Oz had spoken. Conversation closed.

I remember walking to her bedroom window and looking at the clouds beyond the treetops. I wanted to puke, panic, pull out my hair, and shake my head. This had to be figured out. Surely, there couldn't just be NOTHING there??? Right? What does it mean for us, then? We're floating in nothingness, contained by...NOTHING? I had stumbled upon my greatest fear: Space. Nothingness. Void.

To this day, when I imagine the image of the "void," I am petrified. To see astronauts in movies free-floating through space (oops, the cord broke), I must turn my head. I (we) do the same thing in real life, though. We grip onto someone/something so hard, that we can't allow room between us and them/it to exist. Ironically, this is exactly what is needed to differentiate between the "I" and the "other" that makes the attraction to our outside world exist.

It is to our advantage to employ space.

Space in relationships. Space in business. Space in sports. Space on the highway. Space in ballroom dancing. Space in our mind. Space between bills. We get so close to things, that we lose ourselves in them, and that's where we, like Mom said, lose our "minds."

Today and tomorrow, try to purposefully create space somewhere in your life. Cultivate its gift, for it is there as a protector and healer. It is necessary and so often under-employed and utilized. Feel the air around you. Feel the interplay of distance between you and another. Free up space in your mind so that all worries or "problems" can occupy their own corners while you remain removed, allowing a healthy field of space to blossom in between.

And if you were doing this while on the "John" peeing, it's now time to flush. Into the "void" it goes :)