“Love is a four-letter world spelled T-I-M-E.”
Edith Eger
The other day I had just finished a meditation that was like the average meditation session – one in which I mainly observed thoughts, some random and some predictably audit-like, went in and out of body awareness, had a few insights, and didn’t really hit a stable period of stillness. Then I got up and I strolled about the garden a little. I stretched. I asked myself how I felt. I looked at the mountain. I probably thought about supper. I idled, in other words, pleasantly. And then something came to me: how much of self-care, for me at least, is just having the time and space to do such things?
By which I mean, in this instance, the space created by transitioning from one activity to the next in no particular hurry. There are of course the benefits of doing different recreational activities; but is there not also a sense of restoration in having gaps on either side of them?
How much of self-regulating is just space?
When we think of self-care, do we forget to count downtime? I’m thinking here not so much about downtime that is scheduled, as it were, but rather that which is almost circumstantial. In other words, what are the positive spin-offs we derive from the “negative spaces” in our lives, as well as the activities we do that require us to either access or create space?
For me, space is a combination of the external (literal wide-open spaces) and the internal (space to think, reflect and just be).
Travel is restorative because it involves space. Space on trains and in planes. Space in transit. Space on mountains.
Space to meditate but also to space out. Space to look out of windows and let things come into my head unbidden, unexplained and unmediated by a screen and an algorithm, and pass out the other side.
Space in the house alone. Because I’m married but it’s just the two of us, and when my partner goes out to the gym I can potter around, spend unnecessary time cooking and making a mess and half-cleaning it up, lean against the kitchen counter over Instagram, watch things I’ve seen before, play music or daydream.
Space to process. Space in the bathroom behind a closed door where I can sit with a feeling that doesn’t know where to go or what to do except be felt. A feeling that feels like there’s no other side to it.
Emily Nagoski, a medical doctor I came across on a Brené Brown podcast, describes emotions as being like tunnels: we can’t get around them; we have to go through them. The podcast episode focused on her work on the stress cycle, and the importance of recognising that we need to deal not only with the stressors in our lives but also with the stress itself – which is a process, not a fix. There’s nowhere to go, no way we can process feelings, if there is no time and space to do so.
In a separate TED Education interview with Nagoski and her sister and collaborator Amelia, they link this point to burnout and to the misconceptions around how it can be “fixed”. Much as you cannot short-circuit the stress cycle, you can’t tell a person to spontaneously relax. It’s like trying to get onto some sort of 2D deck chair, or taking a chill-slap to the face. Recovery takes time; it requires runway, as well as a physical shifting of gears. A more interesting point they emphasised was that we cannot expect people to self-care their way out of burnout. On the one hand, I know this means we can’t place the burden of a broken capitalist system entirely on employees’ shoulders (“Yeah, you really gotta put yourself first – but also please finish the same amount of work”). The bigger point is that self-care doesn’t work without time and space.
Maybe the outcome of self-care is having a steadier, more efficient operating system that doesn’t melt down as often, that requires less time to regulate itself, whose half-life of upset is halved. If this is possible, do let me know. For now, self-care for me really does sometimes mean space with nothing in it, i.e. space to do nothing and for nothing to happen. I have days, or at least parts thereof, where I need to lie down until it feels safe to move again. So perhaps here I am conflating space with stillness – and in my case, stillness for my brain in particular seems to be what is required. But my point is that self-care sometimes means – has to mean – nothing. In fact, this definition of self-care would qualify as a treatment for burnout, because the simple and pretty much non-negotiable cure for burnout is to STOP.
But I realise that if this kind of self-care means “nothing”, it doesn’t take nothing. Space – the right kind – is a privilege. I have space (literal space, as in a relatively large home, in a suburb with gardens and walls and wide paved roads) because I have resources. I enjoy going into green spaces and the wider world because I can afford to travel. I have time because I have resources (money in the bank so I don’t have to work several jobs at once; a car so it doesn’t take me hours to get somewhere instead of 20 minutes – oh, and I can listen to my own music in there too). So on the one hand, part of my self-care might appear to be “free” (because aren’t space and time free?) but actually it is largely a perk that comes with being rich. Isn’t there a saying to the effect that the rich have the luxury of time?
Maybe a hopeful (and counter-capitalist) point is that self-care activities do not have to cost money – you don’t necessarily need a spa treatment, you might just need some space for yourself. Not even necessarily space with a journal or colouring book or meditation app, just a space and time when outside demands cease temporarily. But how much does space really cost people?
And of course you could look at all this and call bullshit: all the space in the world doesn’t help if you live in a food desert. Or if there’s too much space between you and the nearest clinic, school, police station, or running water.
Space, connection and connecting the dots
When the Nagoski sisters said that we can’t be expected to self-care our way out of burnout, the other thing they added was “It’s about all of us caring for one another”.
Initially I thought I might find space more restorative than others because I am an introvert. But having read some critiques of a certain popular personality typing tool, as well as having become more familiar with myself and my equal needs for solitude and social time, I’m not so sure. Both introverts and extroverts get energy from others, and both need alone time to recover; the balance might differ, but I reckon what’s more important is the quality.
Which brings me to another perspective: for all of us, and for some more than others, space can be the opposite of care or nurturing. Isolation and confinement are torture. Exclusion from community can be a death sentence. Trauma is healed in community, or with others who make us feel safe and cared for. Space must be contained, otherwise it can cause dysregulation rather than restoration.
Basically, in other words, I can introvert happily because my needs for connection are met. And vice versa.
From a romantic perspective, space might just be everything – in sometimes paradoxical ways. Esther Perel, in her 2006 book Mating in Captivity, explained how space, or distance, is what lets couples rekindle their desire for one another. We need a balance between intimacy and distance to reestablish admiration, attraction, and longing. There is no mystery without space, no intrigue without space, no challenge and no pursuit without space. In short, perhaps, no closeness without space.
Space is the fifth element in the Buddhist tradition (at least in my layperson’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism). The realisation of emptiness is the ultimate and only form of groundedness. We are all falling through the air without a parachute, as the saying goes, but it’s OK because there is no ground beneath our feet. Space is perhaps the only thing that allows us to realise we are all interdependent, because what otherwise would connect us? Maybe space is there to nudge us toward the realisation of unified consciousness. IDK.
There is space… and there is time.
For me, music is a form of recreation but also self-care. And music works because music takes time. Alan Watts made the point in Music and Life that one never makes the end of a composition, the point of the composition. Because it is built on time, music creates space. I create a web of bounded space by playing or listening to sounds that occur at predictable intervals, like waves in a steady ocean.
Similarly with dance, the point is not to get to some destination, or to finish as fast as possible, but rather the dance itself. I was in a conscious dance class once and the facilitator asked: “What word do you associate with “home”?” And mine was “rhythm”. In an almost literal sense to me, music creates a home. A series of safe boxes that merge together and pass time, ecstatically and nonverbally.
“The important thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
John Steinbeck
The ultimate test: Build buffers before the universe does it for you
So then I wonder, given how much space I do seem to need in my life, and how much I have had the privilege of availing myself of, and how beneficial I can see it is… Why do I not give myself more space? Why do I not take up more space? Or leave more space for and within the things that I do?
Why do I feel the need to stuff every possible theory into the content I design? Why do I make sure there’s no spare time lying around when I leave the house (or space left in my handbag)? Why do I need to fill silences in conversation with “Of course I knew that”? Why am I terrified to build in a generous buffer when I quote for a job? Why do I get faster when I play the piano?
Why do we need to respond to every WhatsApp as soon as possible, as if for fear of death? Why do we make up the gap between our car and the one in front of us when we’re inching closer to a red traffic light? Does anyone else feel almost enraged by a driver who is slowing down or stopped, before you realise there’s an obstacle in front of them that you couldn’t see? Like if they were just leaving space there, it would be unconscionable?
Why can I not say: “This is enough”? Except when someone tells me so, or when I am actually spacing out? Why can I never risk a gap? It occurred to me that maybe I actually have no boundaries except those enforced by space and time. I still do things until I am arrested, as it were, by the passing of a deadline, or the start or end of an event.
We are all, to a certain extent, reliant on time in any case, for many processes. Incubating ideas. Grieving. Living the experience that gets us wiser. And time and space are part of the process, not just the rests in between the steps. We are also, of course, constantly in denial about all this. What do you mean it takes the time that it takes to drive somewhere? What do you mean I might need to stop working entirely for a while in order to work productively? What do you mean I might need to sleep and exercise and meditate in order to feel human? Is this normal? (and, of course, What do you mean my time here is finite?)
I remember chatting to a friend at a book launch which I was feeling quite anxious about attending because it was in another town; I was on deadline and so travelling would take time away from work. Then we shared about how restorative a commute can be – it’s a time when (provided you have a car and you are driving) you are forced to be present, or at least partly in “brain on standby” mode. My friend joked that if you find your commute to be a relief, then you know you’re really stressed out. My joke used to be that the more leave you take, the more leave you need, because taking time off work causes the work to get compressed and hence more frenetic, so you need more time off to recover. Which is probably all part of the terrible pervasive paradigm that work-life balance is “for” work, and any gap must be filled by something or otherwise it is “lost”.
Where am I going with all of this? The one answer is: simple appreciation.
The other is: Nowhere. There’s enough space and time in the world for insights to exist that I don’t necessarily get to.
(Or I might eventually).
“Time in the heart held still
Space as the household god
And joy instead of will
Knows love as solitude.
Knows solitude as love
Knows time as light not shadow
Thousands of feet above
The sea where I am now.”
Excerpt from the poem “Meditation in Sunlight” by May Sarton
All & None of the Above 