Welcome to Spacetime!
As rendered by ChatGPT
If spacetime sounds like it is somewhere far away, nothing could be further from the truth. It is right here, always, around you, shaping your experience. Pay attention!
First, you should know that I tried to make up up the term, spacetime. Physicists have used it in a way that I understood so poorly that I couldn’t even extract a metaphor that fit. This won’t stop me, including from asking ChatGPT to make a spacetime image for me.
You need spacetime! What you really need is to take more seriously how to be where you are so that what needs to happen can happen. Your repeated violations of this are why I am compelled to write. You keep moving from thing to thing and through your life as though how it is happening doesn’t matter or that you cannot influence. You settle for less than you, and the moments to occupy, deserve. Am I right about this?
About the Moments
Here are a few principles that you can use to design at least one spacetime for something next week. Eventually, you’ll put yourself in the role of a designer of everything, except for what you leave to spontaneity.
One thing at a time
In the physical space that supports the purpose
For a length of time that fits
As long as you tune in
Don’t forget to make an entrance
Some of you are fighting with the first principle. Your life seems too complicated for this and without effective boundaries. But what if you’ve surrendered too soon, such that you are living moments so divided that you are everywhere and nowhere? Take a fresh look.
The space around you matters, as well as what bounds that space and how those boundaries are set up to let in what belongs and keep out what doesn’t. Small and cozy? Open and airy? Natural and unbuilt? Need room to move around? Or quiet enough to engage someone intimately? Filled with what’s familiar? Filled with new stimuli?
Giving something the time it deserves is both about when and for how long. Don’t cram things into moments too small. Don’t be watching your watch in anticipation of where you need to be next. Better yet, add margin to anything and everything so there’s room to get surprised by what happens. If something ends early, you get even more chances to breathe.
Spacetime doesn’t welcome compulsiveness (including screen and social media addictions--unless that is the one thing you want to be doing for a defined spacetime). It benefits from intentionality, if not about an outcome than mostly for showing up in a way that fits. Spacetime can be the training ground for you learning how to really tune in uniquely to each moment and what’s there, what you are creating, alone or with others. Being more responsive and less reactive.
Sabbath-keepers, who tend to be quite experienced with spacetime, know that the preparation makes the sabbath’s best parts possible. You are not just a designer of your spacetime, but you need to orchestrate it. And make an entrance, ritually speaking--the kind that leaves your full body knowing what it has left and what it has joined.
There’s no getting it right. There’s just trying and learning and trying again. Spacetime is forgiving, so long as you care for the whole of your life in a way that allows the parts to get their due.
Beyond the Moments
It also helps to take a seasonal view of spacetime. There are periods when life seems in good order, sustainable and with enough sources of vitality and renewal. There are also periods of unrelenting too-muchness, life that’s out of control and draining without relief. These need to be interrupted, by design, for respite and reflection to get you through--to something else.
Perhaps most importantly there are seasons where life seems to be in flux. What in your life is shifting, and so are you. Perhaps what’s been happening can’t keep happening in the same way. Something new needs to emerge. This may be at 35, 45, 55 or 65. Transitional spacetime is designed around something that feels like a beginning, but without knowing the end, and with lots left in the middle. Still, you can approximate what’s needed: perhaps six months or a year of regular times and spaces for exploration and reflection. With support from others to avoid doing something just to make the uncertainty go away, and so that something else can emerge. Even better: You learn to appreciate, if not enjoy, the middle.
I host a spacetime (yes, virtually, with all of its limitations) that I call a Consultative Conversation about how to make transitional spaces matter. This involves designing a longer window of time for living your life everyday AND engaging with how it is changing. I charge for this, as little as possible. You can give it as a gift to others.
Before that, for free, you can take yourself through The Meanwhile Interview. This spacetime takes roughly 30 minutes in a private space where you are unlikely to be interrupted. Where you can talk out loud (to the recorded video, but really to hear yourself). You can add to it a separate spacetime to talk about it with someone else you trust.
To learn more, go here.