A Reflection on the Spaces In Our Lives
As an only child, I always had space. My own room at an early age in a spacious two-story house on three-quarters of an acre. Surrounded by orange groves that invited childhood wanderings, there was considerable space in and around that house. And as all free-spirited children do, I wandered; free to explore, process and reflect.
I have vague memories of a preschool environment, but my first real memories of congregating with other kids in enclosed spaces are associated with my kindergarten experience and taking the big yellow bus to school. In both spaces I was surrounded by other kids in close proximity. A new experience for me. But to my considerable relief, those spaces were organized, and there was always an adult to define parameters of acceptable behavior and enforce the rules. My first real taste of regimentation beyond my daily routine; and very different spaces for me to process. I didn’t know it then, but my mind was expanding as my spaces grew in number and in size.
As I matured, I became aware of another important space: the distance I could put between me and my parents. They were older, and lucky for me, prepared to let me wander about on my own at an early age — even on our regular trips abroad. I can remember my forays on to Vietnamese streets and Hong Kong alleyways. And I started to see spaces in a different, more expansive manner.
I realized that spaces were more than just defined environments, with visible boundaries in most cases. Spaces also include a wide variety of information processed from the senses: smell, images and color, temperature and humidity, sounds — so many sounds, and the feelings that all of those things engender. Global spaces, I quickly learned, are also massively impacted by culture, latitude and longitude.
Space, our personal space, has so many dimensions. And the beauty of it is, though one can take a momentary slice of space to create a memory, space is always changing and in motion as it is impacted by the passage of time and our movement through it.
We take bits and pieces of the spaces we occupy and make them part of our being, our life story. I have a red fabric dog I used to sleep with as a kid decades ago. I took a piece of that early space and made it part of my life story. I have a couch, recovered many times, that I used to nap on as a child. Then there are the pictures, slices of time, a moment captured on film and rendered eternal.
We all move through an almost endless litany of spaces to create our own tapestry of life. We take what we will from each space; all the while creating additional spaces in our minds to encompass, process and store what we see, hear, taste, smell, feel and think about it all. That is… if we’re paying attention.
#MWCSpace
