Skip to main content

White Space -- Writer's Poke #199

When you read a page of text, what do you focus on? You focus on the text, the words, of course. But what about the space between the text, and the space in the margins? Why so much space? The easy answer is: you need the white space to be able to read the text. If a publisher tried to cram too much text onto a page, thereby devaluing the importance of white space, the text would be a pain to read, if not totally unreadable.

There's an undeniable elegance, a balance, in the appropriate use of white space.

So too in life. Do you have days when you're busy from the moment you wake up until the very moment your head hits the pillow? Such days are obviously exhausting. You might feel the rush that comes from ceaseless productivity, but productivity has a price, and its cost is paid in stress.

Reflection and meditation are to life what white space is to the text. Without time for reflection, life loses its balance. Without time for simply being, we become little more than hamsters running with no real destination.

How much white space does your life need? How much are you getting?

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again." -- Joseph Campbell

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #1 - Real Coffee with Scott Adams

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others.  First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.  He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief.  2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...

The Unconventional Life

How conventional is your life? If you're in your 30s as I am, think about how much you and I have in common: Spouce? check Kid(s)? check Job? check House? check Debt? check Obviously there's nothing wrong with conventional living, but if that's all there is, it seems kind of robotic to me. We have our freewill, and yet we all go through similar life stages, and we all share basic common experiences. What makes my life any different, then, from a million other lives in the Western world? This bothers me, and I yearn to make my life more unconventional. Of course people that are "unconventional" often find themselves being unconventional in uniform ways. So, perhaps there's no way out of the box. There's no way to live a life that someone else hasn't already lived. And maybe that's okay. I would just like to be able to add some unconventional elements to the satisfactory conventional elements of my life. The question is: How can I do that w...

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #2 -- Bald and Bankrupt

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue.  On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there.  For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...