“Learn to Love What Brings You Space”
July 2026We have this need to always be in motion: a steady progression of events that provide shape and structure, color and interest, tension and stability—the architecture of our days.
There’s comfort in this. Safety, perhaps: It’s predictable, reliable, and consistent. It’s manageable. We label it “drive” or “motivation”; call it a sense of responsibility, a commitment to excellence. The perpetual motion makes us feel productive and busy—important, even. Always moving toward something, but also away from something at the same time.
And that’s where we find it, the breathing room.
“Learn to love what brings you space—” poet James Crews writes. “How many minutes can you spend—as if time were a limitless currency… before you come back to the lists, the news… and find that you can breathe around each worry, rest in the gaps between.”
The gaps between. These are purposeful, intentional spaces: a lift, a release. A moment suspended in time to pause, reflect, and prepare. A chance to look forward and look back and consider everything you’re holding, everything you’re letting go.
Here are a few places I’m finding breathing room this summer:
The long stretch of highway between here and the mountains / Flipping through a magazine on the patio, the dog-eared pages tinted by a red umbrella / Meeting myself (and Bach) at the piano each morning / A mid-afternoon nap on a hot summer afternoon / Waiting for the tomatoes on the patio to ripen / Improvising with a student / Watching a monarch flit from leaf to leaf in a patch of milkweed at the edge of the woods / A tree walk, staring up into the canopies like arches in a cathedral / A blinking cursor / An after-dinner walk and pausing to watch three deer in a neighbor’s front yard
What’s bringing you space this month?
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission. This comes at no additional cost to you and helps to support my business.
