Transitioning to 2023: Reflections on Ocean Breath, White Space, and Intentional Inaction
This past summer, I took a road trip with my family, from the South Coast of Oregon down to the Big Sur region of California. It was a winding, unhurried trip, full of fog-kissed scenery, seaside photo opps, and funny anecdotes to tuck away in our collective family memory.
Toward the end of our trip, we visited Pfieffer Beach, with its purple sands at the entrance and its massive rock arch—known as Keyhole Arch—just beyond. As my family and I explored the beach, I stopped for a few minutes to watch the ocean through the arch, and got lost in the rhythmic undulations of the water. As the waves broke, frothy foam would spill forth through the arch; I felt like I was watching the ocean exhale, and found my own breathing matching the ocean’s.
I was struck by this sensation, and wondered to myself: Why is it that, in my day-to-day life, when I live literally minutes from the ocean, I am now suddenly able to notice the breath of the ocean in a way I hadn’t before?
Many of us are familiar with the notion of white space in printed text or on our computer screens—the sections of a page that are left unfilled by words or pictures. White space can create a feeling of spaciousness, and visually, it seems to spotlight whatever remains on the page. We see this effect in the three-dimensional world, too; in art museums, paintings and sculptures are often displayed apart from other pieces, providing spatial rests for visitors.
While we might think of these sorts of pauses as being in service to the “content” stars, I think there’s much to be said for the value of the white space itself. There is beauty in a pause, in its ability to create space for noticing what is meaningful and essential.
For many of us, the pandemic awakened our need to create—and perhaps, even more important, our need to maintain—white space in the fourth dimension: time. During winter, finding and holding white space in our schedules seems particularly urgent, because it provides us the opportunity to connect with family and friends, to deepen our traditions and relationships. And it allows us to prepare for the transition from one calendar year to the next with intention, reflecting on the time we leave behind as we anticipate the months to come.
Those minutes that passed in front of Keyhole Arch reminded me that the pause from my everyday surroundings—the time and mental space to really see the ocean, to really be conscious of its rhythmic breath—was perhaps as vital as the ocean itself. Rather than trying to scribble whatever we can into the margins of each paginated day, and rather than becoming too consumed by the words embraced within those margins, maybe there’s value in simply appreciating the margins themselves, and the quiet respite they provide in offering… absence.
A few years ago, I encountered a lovely, thoughtful poem, titled Fire, by Judy Sorum Brown, which I share below. As you create whatever white space your own circumstances make possible this holiday season, I hope you find Brown’s words both comforting and a call to… inaction—intentional inaction—in the year ahead.
Fire
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
— Judy Brown