I remember on my first trip to England, how surprised I was when I got into the countryside. Somehow I had expected, from looking at maps, that the small country compared to my own, would be small everywhere.
It wasn’t.
As my dear friend and I road out over the highway, I saw green rolling hills, villages in the distance, and a view took my eyes all of the way to the horizon. I had long before discovered the value of a visual change as a vacation, but this was much more than that. I was filled with a feeling of belonging.
All that I saw, the trees, grass that covered the low hilly country, the occasional bigger hill, every bit felt right in proportion and distance. I felt room to relax, to let my mind stretch out. This country perfectly suited my sense of space. I even remarked on it.
A sense of space and my place in it had I thought about it before that day? I don’t know. I do know that, when we talked about a sense of space, I was talking about something that always had been a part of me.
This morning I look at the space around me. I realize there isn’t any. I’ve turned my desk into a tiny country, with satellite nations on my file cabinet, the credenza, the table, the box beside it, the floor . . .
If it looks like that around me, I wonder how it must look inside my head?
I’m going to take a half hour to empty some places around here. I know that if I do, my shoulders will relax and I’ll start to sit back. I’d like to see whether being empty-headed might be a really nice feeling.
Space, my frontier. I’d like to explore where it takes me.
I’m going out the door to see wide open space. As soon as I get outside, I’ll be looking at that horizon under a BIG Illinois blue spring sky over Lake Michigan. I won’t be thinking about what I have left behind that needs working on.
Most things I do are not things that involve the question of whether a life begins or ends if I’m not there. The world can turn without me.
I’m going to stare at the horizon while I think about nothing. I’m going to explore space — that frontier of reflection in my mind.
