The Amazing Grace of Making Space

It was a brilliant plan

After months of research and planning, I had developed a concept for cultural organizations to use databases in a similar way that the business world used audience behavior for strategic planning.

I soared for a while on my own genius (no other product existed) and pride (that I’d actually finished the project.) The idea promised untold opportunities. The problem? It didn’t fire me up. Didn’t arouse my passion or satisfy a need to really make a difference in the world. And I was frankly exhausted from walking the high-stress; low reward career path for more than thirty years. Letting the balloon of my dream deflate was a painful process because I had no idea what came next.

The truth that was difficult for me to see at the time was that the “next thing” needed space to gestate and develop before it could unfurl into action. I had to unclench my fist and let go.

Nature and Filling Spaces

Like a blank page or canvas, space is both exhilarating and terrifying. We can choose anything to fill the space or nothing. We can sit and stare at it, or start adding words; squiggles of paint. Or, we can take a long walk and ask the trees.

I don’t mean literally although there’s nothing wrong with talking to trees. But we can observe with deep attention the barrenness of the limbs and not mourn the loss of autumn’s brilliant leaves knowing the pale green leaves of spring have room to burst forth. We can look up and see old nests from the previous season and know that new ones will be built with fresh materials for fledglings not yet born. Birdsong will once again fill the morning air.

We watch the Earth release what is old, spent, and lifeless without sentimentality because we know the loss is followed by rebirth. When it comes to letting go of what is lifeless in our lives and making space, we resist. Grasp tighter. Wrestle with the question of “What next?” because we can choose.

The interesting thing about letting go of my database concept is that I immediately felt lighter. The pressure was off to market it and nurse it through the early stages of launching and trouble-shooting. With my mind open and uncluttered, I spent more time in nature. Walking. Observing the seasons. Gathering impressions from the world around me through my senses: Smelling the fragrances and scents of summer’s fruits and winter’s smoke and pine. Listening to the swoosh of waves against the lakeshore and the strange cries of the black-feathered cormorants who perched on the rocks.

Amazing Grace

These immersions brought connection to wise elders from whom I learned the secrets of kinship between nature and humans, and the gift of cyclical change. I embraced their wisdom to craft a new path; to fill in the barren limbs of my life with fresh growth. To see that making space, while biologically designed in nature, is for conscious beings a kind of grace. To become more, better, wiser.

In the space created by letting go—whether it’s of relationships, a job, old dreams, or just the past year—we provide a receptive openness that can be filled with insights, creative impulses, new knowledge, intuitive nudges. When nurtured, these embryonic awakenings flourish like the snowdrops of February with promises of rebirth.

In the post-holiday space, I jot down future plans on my new calendar, one I designed around nature’s seasonal changes. The month of January begins the time of “Gestation,” when the ideas and plans to come are being nourished within. There will come a season of “Maturation” when seeds are planted and the world rewilds itself, a season of “Fruition” when the trees hang heavy with fruit and fields burst with corn, and, finally, a season of “Regeneration” when all is harvested and the night brings needed rest and recovery. Space is made; space is refilled.

The Earth, reborn with each season, invites us to shed what is no longer life giving, no longer worth expending our energy on so that we open space, rejoicing in possibility.