A Resilient Artist: Playing in White Space

First, it was my vision, the story of being told I’d lose my driver’s license in six months, and how I managed to stop that train.

My doctor told me that my disease was caused by stress, and my only hope was to figure out what was causing me stress and get rid of it, since there were no medical interventions available.

I slowed down my frantic lifestyle to contemplate the question.

As a chemical engineer, when I realized I craved rural living, there came a realization that chemical engineers work in plants that employ many people. As such, you can find them where many people live.

One day, driving home from a weekend camping trip in Algonquin Park, I wondered aloud, “What do you have to do to live here?”

Traffic slowed to the snail’s pace, which is known as commuting back to the city after a long weekend. The slowdown would normally upset me, but I looked up and noticed a name on a building.

Within six months, it was my workplace. With that employment contract, I bought a new half-built home on the water. Less than two years after I dreamed of owning a kayak, while in an apartment that couldn’t accommodate one and a budget that didn’t allow for one, a kayak became the next obvious thing to buy.

And then, just like that, someone was telling me that my life, which was built on hopes, hard work and serendipity, is going to come to an end. Without the driver’s license, I wouldn’t be able to keep my job, my mortgage, and I’d be living in the city.

Horror upon horrors.

Room in Your Agenda

At that time, stopping to contemplate anything was unheard of for me. Meditation? No, it was a waste of time—precious time that I needed to do all the work on my house, keep my full-time job, and figure out all the new experiences that came with rural living.

Between the idea of moving back to a city and the hard realization that some of the stress I’d invited into my life was harmful, I had to stop the full-steam ahead that was my life and get to the root of the issue.

I needed some white space in my agenda. Full stop.

Within a few days, while getting ready for work one morning, I heard myself say in my head, “I wish I didn’t have to see that.”

Outside my head, I was doing nothing about it. Apparently, within a few months, I certainly wouldn’t have to see that. I wouldn’t even get to see that.

With the ah-ha moment realized, I picked up the mantle of the work that needed to be done. It wasn’t enough to connect the dots; I had to change course. Immediately, I was waking up and springing out of bed at 5 a.m.

Room in your agenda doesn’t mean having unscheduled time to hear yourself think or even a rigidly scheduled time to meditate. It means being open to the universe and collaborating on the best direction forward. It means having the time to dedicate to a priority higher than the ones you thought you had.

You can’t dominate the universe; the best you can do is co-create, which means being flexible, tuned into your creative partner, and working in synchronicity.

Patience in Your Speed

Once, my mother gave me a pewter bookmark that read, “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angels can fly.” I clipped it to my sun visor.

A few years ago, my mechanic told me that the frame of my SUV was rusting and that I should retire it as soon as possible. I didn’t want to do that.

Within a few weeks, it was stolen from my driveway, in a slew of unfortunate turn of events:

1. The insurance doesn’t even cover the cost of the new car parts just installed.
2. Hearing that my brother does not intend to repay the $1000 loan I have just lost.
3. A water supply line that needs replacing, and insurance doesn’t fully cover that cost.
4. Not having worked in eighteen months, with little interest in my resume.

When it was found a few streets away, there were crack pipes in it, but the story was sadder. It looked like the truck was a little boy’s bedroom, the back seat was a woman’s closet, and the front seats were man territory. They needed a home, and left me to mine.

With some white space to hear the whisper of love and compassion when the roar of betrayal and regret screams fiercely, a new perspective reigns:

1. With that rusty frame, maybe I wasn’t going to make it through the winter either.
2. Losing $1,000 is better than the $50,000 my friend lost to his brother.
3. When the copper pipe rubs up against stones and gravel for 60 years, it’s bound to work its way through. It happened to everyone on the block around that year. You’re not special – pay attention to the warning signs.
4. Let’s face it, I wasn’t interested in my resume either, and I wasn’t starving.

Peace in Your Environment

While many pray for abundance, I know excess of anything isn’t good. I grew up in abundance, so much so that in our house, there was clutter everywhere. I’ve had enough of abundance; I’ll stick with what I need.

I pray for peace, not abundance. Having an abundant garden means I’ll have to spend time trying to give extras away, but no one wants them because they, too, had a bumper crop.

With abundance, I’ll have to spend time canning and freezing them, because nothing invites poverty like ignoring abundance. Even though I’m not excited at the prospect of future limp beans, this is what abundance brings me: so many recipes, I’m not sure I’ve found a good one.

They say that an abundance of choice leads to worse outcomes because you can look back and rethink your decision many times, imagining different, better outcomes. If that’s true, then what about white space, where there is so much possibility and potential because it’s up to you to define one?

If too many options lead to analysis paralysis, the idea of white space might render people worse off than paralyzed, if they don’t know what to do with it.

The possibility and potential is being in the matrix when the power goes off. Suddenly, there’s nothing but white space and very few others. Where’d everyone go, you wonder.

I got comfortable with this untethered feeling while snowmobiling. With nothing but white, I couldn’t tell up or down or what was on either side of me. I was just free.

It was scary at first, then uncomfortable, and then like flying or floating through clouds – simply terrific, but not at first. It was difficult to pry me off the couch that day, and I’m thankful he did.

How about you? Are you difficult to pry off the couch, or are you already busy?

Creativity in Your Story

I wrote a sentence that made someone irate. “You can’t say that!” she declared.

I replied that since I said it was myfirstnamelastname.com and didn’t violate anyone’s rights, I could say that. Not only could I, but I did, even as I strove to avoid being controversial or offensive.

You can say many more things than you think; indeed, you can feel with even more freedom. You are the only censor in your head.

Science dictates a certain truth. There is what is seen and observed, and theories connect them. Why not one of your own?

The facts: When I was a child on a playground waiting for my piano lesson to start, I placed my practice book at the base of the swing and hopped on. As I swung, a sudden windstorm kicked up. When I got off the swing, I couldn’t find my book. When a replacement book couldn’t be found, I got out of the lessons.

The story: The narrative I get to add that no one can take away with science is that while on that swing, I thought about not going to those piano lessons anymore, oh please oh please, to no more piano lessons, no more piano lessons.

Back then, I kept my mouth shut because I’d already asked politely. I’d also begged, pleaded, moaned, complained before resorting to asking for divine intervention.

Today, yes, I can say that, and I was delighted to be freed from a prison of control based on good intentions.

In the white space, you are the one who gets to tell the story. Please, don’t act like an audience member in your life; act like a voter, a co-creator, even.

Light in Your Darkness

You are a co-creator. Or, someone is listening when you are clear, calm, and consistent. Maybe when you send it out on a wavelength, like a swing.

To me, this lesson was so much more important than piano lessons.

Instead of piano, I asked to go to Sunday school. Maybe my friends who talked about God and praying to Him had a leg up on how the world works, and I’d just found out. After a few weeks, though, I quit that too.

During a dark time, I visited my grandmother and found new insight. As we leafed through her old picture albums, we came across a photo of a cherub asleep in her lap.

“I captioned it Little Angel because she was calling you everything but,” my grandmother explained.

I’m glad she told me, because I read it, “Lucifer Angel,” the fallen one, the one who didn’t belong in heaven.

I was the one who was kicked out. I’d always felt like I didn’t belong, an alien in a crowd, a stranger in my family. Shrouded in shame before I ever introduced myself.

But there I was, belonging in a quiet, clean, safe place.

In psychological terms, I might have been the introvert in a family of extroverts. I want to get beyond the classifications that make us comfortable and push to find the truths that set us all free.

When there’s peace and order in your environment, there is peace and order in your soul. When your soul is disordered and restless, you can’t take the lack of distraction in your environment.

You know how much work you have to do—and so does anyone else willing to examine your surroundings.

Faith in Freedom

So determined to set myself free from cognitive biases, distorted lessons, and dysfunctional beliefs, I found peace in order. I learned about them, how they might work, and what predictable adverse outcomes they caused. Finally, I created a framework that I called What Could Be.

I didn’t include that after I completed my effort, I learned about chakras. To me, it’s no coincidence that they are remarkably similar. It seems to me that science is starting to catch up to what spirituality has known for centuries.