new to open space?

[Michael Herman]

two posts caught my eye today.  suzanne mentioned finally having experienced
her first open space.  then bui was commenting on what makes it work,
admitting along the way that he'd not...

so maybe this is just restating what ralph said so well last week about
"open space".

but i'm going to suggest -- especially to all of the "never-been-in-it" and
"would love to try it someday" folks out there on the list -- that we have
all already been there.

let's start with the law of two feet, which seems to be the core of
everything.

having "been in open space" many times, i can say that it was a familiar
place.  the freedom and responsibility are not unlike when i went away to
college.  power, possibility.  not unlike when i am solo hiking in the
backcountry, bounded by my physical limits, for sure, but able to go
wherever my two feet would take me, to learn about a territory and
contribute to reaching some destination that i chose for myself.

it's not unlike any vacation where i leave teh computer and phone at home.
not unlike the small space of an airline seat, where my range might be
severely limited, in at least one dimension, but mind is free to wander and
relax as it chooses.  not unlike the time after a resignation but before
actually leaving a job.

sleeping in has a certain spacious quality for me, bucking the pressure of a
world that says work starts early.  staying up late has a certain quality.
stopping in at churches or rivers or other quiet places when travelling.
sitting at outside cafe's in the summer time, even better with a sunday
newspaper.

in all of these places, there is a quality of being active and doing
nothing.  and these are just a few of the examples that come to mind.  so i
wonder... where else have you (and probably many others of us) already been
there???

not to mention the four principles, which i often summarize as "how things
work when they really work."  what ordinary life conditions and
circumstances might remind you of the states that these lines remind us
about???

as i look outside, there is a raging blizzard here in chicago.  my wife's
flight out to a big client meeting was cancelled, at 5am this morning.
suddenly the whole of chicago and a bunch of places connected by planes and
phones and the like are running on "whenever it starts"  or "whenever you
can get here" ...is the right time.  i've experienced a similar shift in
other storms, like having my dad in the hospital for heart surgeries, when
we actively take things one day, one moment, at a time.  like one step at a
time when hiking.

thinking spatially or kinesthetically for a moment, it seems more about
stacking and scrambling than ladders and climbing.

so i'm wondering if we can say some more about where it is that we've all
already been in open space.  where does or has space already open in life as
you're living it?

michaelh




-- 

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Ave #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA

phone: 312-280-7838
email: michael at michaelherman.com
skype: globalchicago

http://www.michaelherman.com
http://www.openspaceworld.org
http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org

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