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Whitespace

That inner, indescribable feeling of contentment

By Shivani // शिवानीPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Whitespace
Photo by Milad B. Fakurian on Unsplash

Whitespace. It’s a word we use in consulting--often to communicate nothing concrete, really. It’s a filler word: some friendly jargon we lean on when we want to make a sophisticated point in front of our peers or clients.

"Let’s navigate this whitespace, together…’ or ‘the opportunity can be found at the intersection, trust me, in this whitespace, right here…"

It loosely means the ‘unused space’. But that nondescript definition leaves me feeling uneasy. It’s such a filler word that I’ve decided to fill it up with my own definition: serene nothingness. Whitespace is intentional mental sparseness, it’s reduced ephemeral clutter of the spirit, it’s altogether a whole lot of internal nada. It's the inner peace that you feel when you come through the other side of what feels like a battle...

...and it is comforting, it is good.

My wellbeing resolve for 2021 is rooted in my wellbeing resolve from two years ago. I want to just feel a better than I did before so I can be proud of myself again day to day. In 2019, I found myself constantly playing out complex dialogues in my head and then battling to quiet the uneasiness that followed. I’d imagine…

What I’d say to my family, to justify an action.

What they would then say to me, in disbelief.

What I’d explain to my partner, about my general disarray.

What my therapist would say to me, once I explained the ongoing mental narration!

It was exhausting. It was enough to write a play about. All that internal dialogue (and some of it comical, looking back...) But, it was also crushing for my wellbeing, and I couldn’t stop.

Then I heard a very warm and seductive idea; that the constant replay of the past was depression, the constant anticipation of the future was anxiety, and the only solution—the only way to find peace—was to focus on today. So simple and painfully obvious but it felt like a revelation. I also read that three common techniques for finding fulfillment and peace are synonymous to finding silence and stillness: yoga to hear your body, journaling to hear your heart, and meditation to hear your mind.

For me, 2021 year is about yoga, journaling and meditation so I create enough silence to appreciate my today. Through these rituals I’m filling to the brim with—you guessed it—what I can only describe as whitespace, as counterintuitive as that sounds. And that feels really good.

When I’m in the whitespace, I can appreciate the flowers on my desk. I can feel overly proud of the dinner I made. I can stop judging my artwork, and experiment freely. I’m not consuming neverending content or salacious gossip and peripheral negativity. I’m so happy to be sitting in the natural light, when the sun cuts through my window. It's like I've exhaled and I'm only channeling what’s healthy for me to imbibe. My entire being is lighter: floating, ascending even.

My favorite color has always been black (which is telling, because it’s not a color.) There’s something about the black darkness that is alluring, and cold. It’s mysterious by nature. It’s New York’s uniform, it’s the magnitude of the deep night where all the unplanned happens. I think its human nature to be attracted to darkness and to want to explore the sharp complexity of our sadness.

But the whitespace is more important. It’s my internal equilibrium that I’ll honor and preserve in 2021 like a fresh canvas. With this peace and clarity I’ll approach my future intentionally—picking only the colors that feel like me. Painting strokes that are sometimes ragged, sometimes smooth, but altogether beautiful because they are real and what happened. And I’ll be content with that.

selfcare
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About the Creator

Shivani // शिवानी

Finding one more outlet for all this pent up New York angst and love.

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