The spaces in which we live matter.
The details, they matter.
In your home, in your office, the coffee shop or boutique, the market or cafe, we are drawn to places and spaces that evoke feelings within us. Feelings of comfort or joy, feelings that remind us of favorite vacations and stolen moments. I think we love being inspired by space that demands we feel something.
For when we feel, we are reminded that yes we are still alive.
I long to create space where those who choose to enter immediately feel at ease. That all who enter our space understand that they are welcome. More than just welcome, they are wanted. I desire that the space in which we inhabit would be full of light and life and color and comfort. We intentionally create that space by the art we hang on the walls, the family heirlooms we have scattered about, but especially we create that space by the joy, love, and acceptance we speak into our space everyday.
(Expect on those hard days, or those dangerous moments even on the good days where we yell, or loose our cool, or say something we regret. We live speaking forgiveness into those moments to hopefully create a forgiving space.)
I have come to understand the importance of what it means to create space. More than understand it's importance, I have found how we need to be a people who create spaces that are full of love and acceptance. That in order to work against the hate and anger that can so easily penetrate our lives, we need to turn our homes and work spaces and hearts and families into spaces that are full of all the good the world needs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."
The single act of breathing and being alive already demands that we change the world in which we live. Just by being alive, we have changed the world as it was. We do this by choice, or we simply exist, not ever fully understanding the power we hold just by being alive. Whether we understand it or not, we effect the spaces in which we live. The beauty and light inside of us effects our surroundings. As does the anger and hurt that we carry.
And so we have a choice.
We either live into the darkness, thus emulating more darkness into the space and lives of those around us,
or...
we live into the beauty and light.
This too changes the spaces and lives around us.
I love to create space. Space where people want to gather and talk for hours. Not just the conversations that allow you the highlights of one's life, but the deep, soul unearthing talks that require sharing feelings and hidden thoughts, and are usually accompanied by glasses of wine while tucked under a blanket sharing a couch. I desire music always playing filling in the silences and creating comfort and words for those who can't find theirs. I desire space that is filled with art and color and comfort. I desire space that is filled with people from all walks of life that feel safe to be themselves.
A space where all feel welcomed and leave feeling inspired.
It is easy to think of space in regards to styles of decor, but it goes so much deeper than that. It is the intentionally of how the space we create effects the lives of those around us, including ourselves. The space we create also transcends the physical space in which we live in, but includes the soul and spirits of those in the space.
I can't do a lot to change the course the history. I can however, head the words of Emerson and bring the beauty inside of me wherever I go, adding to the joy and love and comfort of the space in which I occupy. And in turn, it is my deep and solemn prayer that what beauty lives in me would inspire those around me. Then together we could push against the darkness, slowly changing the world one life and space and moment at a time.
Katrina from Studio Laguna captured my first book launch party in which I understood fully for the first time the importance of creating space and was able to use those words to describe how I was feeling. It was a magical night, check it out.