Timber

It’s the word the lumberjack utters in warning as a tree teeters on the precipice of falling. I just want to get out of my own way.

I know what I want in this situation; an opportunity to get it presents itself.  I need to put myself way out there to make it happen. And so I take a deep breath; I take a risk.

The rewards overwhelm me, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, expected or could even imagine.  I’m speechless, but I’m not. I’m glowing with pride, awestruck by my own power to create the very encounter I’d hoped to have.  And there’s nothing I want more than to replicate this moment again and again and again.  Yet I know if I’m ever to find my way back here, I need to walk away okay with the possibility that I may never find my way back here.

In art we’re taught to appreciate the beauty of negative space, the area around and between the images we create, as much as and sometimes even more than, that of the figure or object itself which occupies the positive space.  It requires a trained eye to absorb and behold the value of negative space in its own right. Few are attuned to its existence, but what if this is the exact space we need to be in to create the life we imagine?

Maybe the life I imagine doesn’t come to me through a steady stream of soul-baring connections alive in the positive space; maybe it takes an intermittent course of heart-stopping vignettes orchestrated from the negative space to build what’s truly lasting.

And so it isn’t about wondering why we can’t have more wonderful moments.  It’s about striving to live each wonderful moment in indelible evanescence.

Sometimes life is best lived when we don’t know what’s coming until it's right on top of us.