Take this as your reminder. Take it as permission. Permission to pause.
Why? Because wonder grows where nothing else does.
“Don’t forget the spaces in-between.”
This is something I’ve said many times over the last few years, using it to illustrate an interesting point, which can be applied to multiple situations.
Originally it was said to me, many years ago, in a cello lesson when I was a kid. I loved my cello teacher. He made music like an emotion for me. He wasn’t only teaching me the mechanics of music, he was teaching me how to feel it.
“In music,” my teacher said, “the rests are as important as the notes.”
He repeated. “The rests ………… are as important ………. as the notes.”
The ‘rests’ are when we don’t play. In our part of the music, it is silent. They are the pauses.
And they’re AS IMPORTANT as the moments when we’re playing.
Silence is just as important as sound.
I first applied this concept to my interior design work.
I’m a maximalist at heart when it comes to interiors. Personally, I like ‘things’ because for me they bring warmth and cosiness, familiarity and memories. But too many ‘things’ can feel stifling, cluttered, depressing and uneasy.
In my advice to aspiring Airbnb owners, doing their own interiors, I instructed them to not forget the spaces in-between.
Filling a house with things to make it feel cosy is great, but when there is no where, visually and physically, to ‘rest’, to take a pause from the ‘clutter’, then it all becomes too much, and the guest will want to leave rather than stay in their beautiful holiday home forever!
It’s the skill of an interior designer to ensure this is built into a design. And if it’s done well, no one will notice. But they’ll FEEL it.
We FEEL the rests, because they matter.
It’s why we put paragraphs in our writing.
It’s why we have a ‘week-end’.
It’s why we relish our sleep.
It’s why we have green-belt spaces outside sprawling cities.
They ARE the ‘Spaces In-Between’, and we need them.
The same is true in our lives. We need those spaces, those pauses, those rests. And yet, often what we think we should do is ‘fill’ them.
Being ‘busy’ is a standard answer to the question ‘how are you?’, and it’s usually meant, and received, as a good thing.
“Better than being bored!” Not always.
We need rests in the music of our lives. We need to pause once in a while, and know that the times we are bored, or just doing something for the pure joy it, are equally valid to the times when we’re ‘busy’, making money, ferrying the kids around, feeding the family, or planning for every eventuality under the sun for the holiday we’re taking a week next Thursday (or is that just me?).
So to end this, please remember to take those ‘spaces in-between’ and saviour them.
Use them for WONDER.
Because wonder grows where nothing else does.
Love finding this today!
The picture of the Goathland sunrise caught my attention and then I found the spaces in between. Lovely read g, thanks! 🍂🍁
Such beautiful voiceovers! And I love how delicately you connected music, interior design and language through this.