Empty Space in front of Activities

If you need to call the mayor of the neighbouring city, what do you do first? Do you start making the meal for the night? Do you wash dishes? Do you start prepairing the next big project that is expecting to get started?

Have you ever thought what makes things difficult? I have no reason to avoid making this phone call. I have met the mayor before. He is a matter-of-fact person and he might even remember me. I have just talked with his secretary and as far as I have understood her correctly she is convinced that the mayor is really interested in the idea I want to introduce to him. So - why to waste energy for making the phone call difficult, for stackering barriers in front of the most simple task? If I were my colleague Mika, I would not let my energy get wasted like that. Neither would my friend Asta do that.

Having spent an hour prepairing the evening meal, fifteen minutes for doing the dishes and ten for collecting material for the next project I go on doing a lot of active self-talk. Then all of a sudden I am ready to dial the mayor´s number.

This is what happened: "This is the mayor speaking. I can´t talk with you now. Could you please leave a message. I´ll contact you later."



Every now and then I go and read an old shabby-looking post-it message my daughter has pinned on the wall: "The problems one has in the college are mostly just sentimental crap."

The unknown-to-me United- World-College thinker is right. The only change I would like to make is to replace the word ´college´with the word ´life´.

"The problems one has in life are mostly just sentimental crap."

But maybe the only role of the sentimental crap in life is not just to function as a dumping area for wasted energy. Without that special phone call I might not have anything proper to eat tonight, the dishes would still be accumulating in the kitchen, Mika and Asta would not have got their due amount of remote-controlled admiration for today. Maybe most of the life´s necessities get done just while we are getting ready to do something else, during those curious spaces or rooms of time that preceed various not-yet-activities.

You know that there is always room between thoughts. In the same way there seems to be room in front of not-yet-activities. Maybe that is exactly the room where the normal life takes place.

An alternative interpretation could be to regard the not-yet-time-room as the nest of special creative pushes. Instead of making the phone call - or whatever activity you are putting off - you find yourself suddenly surrounded by tasks and duties which normally lack interest. Just at present they seem most attractive and important to you. What would our normal life be like if the grey and colourless matters of life - doing dishes, cleaning kitchen etc. never got glorified like that?

Peter Englund, a Swedish historian, says that we are not only what we have experienced. We are also what we long for. Some other people have said the same before him.

As human beings we live in a continuous state of expectancy. What we expect to happen affects how we interprete the events and opportunities of every-day life. My friend Edit said once about Christmas time in Madrid that the Advent, el adviento, may be even more exciting than Christmas itself. She, surely, did not think of the Winnie the Pooh who appreciates more the moment before honey than the honey itself. She thought of the future that needs to be filled with dreams that invite us to come there.

Tomorrow I will call the mayor once more. It is just the second time. It will be interestng to see how much preparation that phone call wants to get.

Wish you empty spaces between your thoughts and acitvities!

I just went to the mailbox. I´m expecting to get a very interesting book from Amazon.com. It may deal with expectations as well - which again might awaken expectations in your mind, too.