Make Space
More years ago than I would like to admit. I took an acting class.
Theater and performance had once been such a part of my life until they weren’t.
Then, I was working a full-time job that required long hours and travel. Then, in the tiny town that I lived, there was a week-long series of stage and screen workshops. I somehow managed to shoehorn a week off. These workshops, these classes, were an attempt to reclaim and reconnect to something I felt I had lost.
After the particularly magnificent Shakespeare workshop, I told the instructor how deeply moving it had been. I lamented that there was so much more that I wanted to do, to create, to learn and she said:
“You have talent but you have to make space in your life for it.”
She then went on to narrate what I would come to refer to as the parable of the sofa.
“Imagine you have a house, you have a beautiful sofa, a beautiful yellow sofa, but the room is so full of stuff that you can’t get to it, you can’t even see it, you can’t even sit down on it, and eventually, you forget that it is there. That is what happens if you don’t make space for what you want in your life.”
I have no idea if she was right about talent, what I do know is that she was right about making space.
I confess I never looked at a sofa in quite the same way ever since.
It took more years that I would like to admit to figure that out, and even more to be able to begin to bring it into practice. Because making space in a clanging, chaotic, clamoring, unpredictable, incessant world can be incredibly challenging. Making space is not a one time event, it is a practice. It is attending to our attention and being deliberate in world that is organized around the immediate. The first step of make space is knowing we need to do it, setting an intention around it.
Now, as we embark on the new year, especially in this year, how can we be intentional about what it is we want to make space for, what wants, what wishes, what loves, what long lost hopes and imaginings of what could be do we want to make space for, lest we forget they are there?
May your 2022 be the year of making space.
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