Being in Between

Last week I talked about the Healthy Mind Platter, by Dan Siegel, the seven kinds of daily activities that support a healthy and balanced mind.

There is focus time, when we concentrate and do one thing without multitasking. There is time in, when we turn inward through meditation, mindful movement, or reflection. 

There is down time, when we are awake but not planning, accomplishing, or trying to get anywhere. 

There is physical activity, sleep, play, and connection.

All seven matter. And today I want to talk specifically about down time.

Sometimes these seven activities don’t just show up as choices within a day. Sometimes there are phases in our lives, days or weeks, even months, when one of them needs to come more into the foreground. It can almost feel as though life itself is asking for more of one thing and less of another.

I am in such a phase right now.

Julian, my son, has moved out to college, and I am finding myself in a transition. I am reorienting to what this actually means for me and for my life. And what I notice is that life is asking me to slow down. To give this transition space. To not be so quick to know what comes next.

There is no need yet to make a new plan. No need to immediately fill the space that has opened. I can simply be here for a while, in this strange and tender place of not knowing.

Transitions require time.

A change of job, a move, a loss, a breakup, a child leaving home, a new relationship, retirement, illness, recovery. There are so many times in our lives when something changes, in small ways or enormous ones.

Sometimes we wanted the change. Sometimes we absolutely did not. But either way, change creates space. Something that was there is no longer there in the same way.

And we are often not very comfortable with that space.

There can be a tremendous urge to fill it quickly. To make the next plan. Start the next project. Find the next relationship. Decide who we are going to be now.

But what if we don’t?

What if we allow the empty space to be empty for a while?

This place of not knowing can actually be a place of limitless possibility. And it would be a tragedy to fill it prematurely with something that may not be right simply because we are too impatient, or too uncomfortable, to wait and see what life has to offer.

It is a little like moving into a new house and immediately putting pictures on every wall just because the walls look empty. If we can live there for a while, feel the rooms, notice the light, see how we actually inhabit the space, we may discover something completely different belongs there.

The empty wall is not a problem.

And maybe the empty spaces in our lives are not problems either.

My life has changed now that my child has moved away. My routines will change. My focus will change. There will be new freedoms, new limitations, new feelings, new questions.

How will it all look? I really don’t know yet.

And I notice that, for now, life does not ask me to know.

It asks me to feel into it. To feel my feelings. To notice the space. To listen.

I also notice that I have less energy for certain things right now. Instead of fighting that or thinking I should be more productive, I am trying to take it seriously. Maybe less energy for outward doing simply means: do less. Slow down. Feel more deeply what is happening within.

From the outside it may look like not much is happening.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

In fact, this can be an enormously fruitful time in the inner world. Something is reorganizing. Something old is ending, and something new has not yet taken form.

The transformation from the catapillar to a butterfly comes to mind.

We don’t have to interfere with the process at all.

There is a kind of wisdom in allowing ourselves to be in between.

Life is always showing us the way. The question is whether we can become quiet enough to notice, and whether we can lean into what is actually being asked of us.

It doesn’t matter so much what our to-do list says. The deeper agenda is evolution. It is transformation. And sometimes the to-do list needs to be put aside for a while so that the real agenda of life can become the priority.

May we learn to move with these rhythms.

Sometimes life asks for more play. Sometimes more doing nothing. Sometimes there is tremendous energy for activity, creativity, and manifestation. Sometimes there is a longing for connection outward, and sometimes life asks us to turn toward the connection within.

Meditation, these daily times when we stop, become still, and listen underneath it all, makes us more sensitive to the asks and rhythms of life itself.

And perhaps even more importantly, meditation practice gives us the strength and trust to follow those rhythms, whether they are comfortable or uncomfortable, whether we understand them or not.

Sometimes the practice is simply to stay in between a little longer.

Not knowing.

Not filling.

Listening.

And feeling the richness of life in the spaces between.