The Space Between

Look around. 

“We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.” — Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

Look around. What do you see? What do you hear?

Most of it can be identified, if not by name, then by its dimension or by its relation to other things. A wall, a chair, a cup on a table, the sound of a car going by. We move through life in this way, collecting names, fitting objects into categories, confirming them through shared agreement. Things feel real because we can all point to them, and do so constantly.

But surrounding them, engulfing them, shaping them, is a presence that slips by unnoticed. Space. The emptiness between walls. The air between your eyes and your hand. The silence that carries words and music.

But space feels less tangible, less important. It is beside the point of focus so it goes unseen, even as it is always present. Yet it is not nothing. What we call empty is alive with depth. It is the condition in which all things exist. 

In design, it’s white space that gives meaning and clarity. 

In a room, it’s the emptiness that allows movement and calm. 

In sound, it’s the silence that shapes music and language. 

In thought, it’s the pause that allows awareness to arise.

Noticing this doesn’t just add a new detail to perception, it broadens perception itself. Space is not ancillary to reality. It’s reality’s frame.

In Design

“White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background.” — Jan Tschichold, The New Typography

Designers are lucky. We’re taught to see value in empty space, even if we can’t all consciously define why it “works”. We call it White Space, or “breathing room”. It’s the space around objects that allows the entirety of a design to be understood quickly, clearly, and with minimal effort. 

Value in Emptiness

Space in design is not just “blank” areas. It carries real value. That empty space guides attention, gives meaning, and creates emotion. It tells your eye where to look, what matters most, and what can wait. 

A margin around a headline or generous spacing around a button makes that element more powerful because it isn’t lost in clutter. 

Text packed tightly feels overwhelming. Surrounded by space, it feels important and digestible. The content hasn’t changed, the space around it has. Designs with breathing room feel calmer, more trustworthy, more sophisticated. Overcrowded designs feel urgent, noisy, or cheap. Space communicates tone as much as color or typography. On a more practical level, white space reduces cognitive load and improves usability. It helps the brain group related items, scan quickly, and avoid fatigue. That’s not decoration, it’s actual functionality.

In other words, empty space is not a backdrop. It is an active element. Its value is as real as the text or images it surrounds, because without it, the rest loses its shape.

It pains me to hear designers defending white space in a layout to stakeholders that have not yet grasped its inherent value. That space is not nothing with no value, it's emptiness with tons of value.

Physical Space

“Space is the breath of art.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

Hold your hand in front of your face. What do you see? Well, your hand, of course. But you probably didn’t consider that you are looking through a space between your eyes and your hand. That space may seem empty, but empty does not mean there is nothing of value to recognize. I’m not referring to air or its molecules, I’m referring, quite specifically, to just the empty space. 

Emptiness ≠ Nothing

Notice the space of emptiness between your eyes and your hand. Focus on the space itself until you experience your brain automagically seeking to define its boundaries and connecting it to the empty space to the left, to the right, behind your hand, and continuing to expand until you’re aware of the vast ocean of space weaving around and filling everything. 

Religious traditions and philosophies across time have pointed toward this same recognition. Taoism speaks of the usefulness of the empty vessel, Buddhism reminds us that form and emptiness are not two, and mystics in many cultures describe the ground of being as a spacious presence that holds everything. What may seem like nothing is in fact the very condition that makes everything possible.

When you allow awareness to expand into this space, even briefly, something shifts. The mind softens. Stress loosens its grip. Instead of being locked into objects, problems, or passing thoughts, you’re touching the larger context that holds them all. You begin to feel less like a separate self struggling against the world, and more like a part of the same open field that nature itself arises from.

This space exists outside our focus, our definitions, and the stories we create. It’s free of past and future, judgment and identity. It just is. And in that simplicity, peace can be glimpsed.

Space Between Thoughts

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power,” — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

It can be unsettling to realize that you are not your thoughts (and perhaps unsettling to be given this surprise. Surprise!). 

There is a difference between using the mind as a tool and being carried by it. When solving a problem, you activate thought intentionally. But most thoughts throughout our days are not solving, not building, not chosen. They are reflexes of memory, habit, and ego that we tend to identify with as “me.”

Think of your mind as a muscle that produces thoughts. You can’t stop the muscle, it’s involuntary, like your heart. So, you can’t stop your thoughts.. or can you? Try this. Listen for your next thought…

That moment that you just experienced while waiting to hear your next thought, that was a moment, an empty space, between thoughts. But that pause was not empty in the sense of lacking, that space is full of clarity. In that moment, you were not tied to your stories or the meaning that you surround yourself with. You were Present. 

In these gaps between thoughts we are awake without being defined. These spaces are small but powerful. They reveal that awareness is larger than the mind’s activity, and that you are not bound to the endless flow of thinking.

You Are That Space

Moments of being truly present, without thought, happen more often than we realize. We have moments of awe at a beautiful scene, stillness just after a sudden fear, moments of deep intimacy, moments absorbed in play, and moments in mid-thrill. These are moments when the mind’s machinery pauses and you are, quite literally, out of your mind. Yet there you are.

Eckhart Tolle describes this as the experience of the real self, the awareness behind the thoughts, the presence that can listen to them, question them, and choose whether to follow them. It is not the Self built from stories of protection or identity. It is the Self that simply is.

When we rest in this space, even briefly, we remember that we are the awareness in which thoughts come and go.

Spaces in Sound

“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts.” — Henry David Thoreau

Most of us first notice the value of silence in contrast. A noisy house, a restless sibling, the constant hum of activity, and then, suddenly, quiet. The relief feels like fresh air. But it never lasts long. 

Silence, like space, is usually defined by absence. Yet it isn’t just the lack of noise. Silence is the ground from which all sound arises. Every word, every note of music, every rustle of leaves exists only because silence holds it. Without silence, sound would have nowhere to land, no contrast to give it shape. A melody without rests collapses into noise. Speech without pause dissolves into incoherence.

At first it feels shallow, useful only as a break from noise. But with time and attention, it reveals a depth of its own. In certain moments like watching a sunset, sitting with music turned off, or simply resting in stillness, you might realize you’ve lost track of time. The silence wasn’t just a pause between sounds. It was an opening into presence itself.

Just as white space lets design breathe, silence lets sound live.

Spaces Between Movement 

“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause.” — Rollo May, THe Courage to Create

Movement is defined by action and by the pause that surrounds it. The body rises because it once was still. A gesture has meaning because it begins and ends in rest.

We tend to notice only the motion itself, yet each action, as in dance, is framed by stillness giving us rhythm and tempo. A dancer’s grace is not only in the arc of motion but in the spaces of suspension, the held moment before release, the quiet balance that gives shape to flow.

In daily life, the same principle holds. The space between movements allows presence to emerge. It gives the nervous system a chance to reset, the breath a chance to steady, awareness a chance to catch up to action. Without it, we rush unconsciously from one task to the next, never inhabiting the life that is moving through us.

To notice the space between movements is to discover that action is not diminished by pause. It is strengthened by it. In stillness, movement finds rhythm. In pause, life becomes livable.

Reflection

This is not something our culture makes easy. Silence is often treated as uncomfortable. Empty space is something to be filled. Every moment is crammed with content, every surface packed with visuals, every pause rushed past. 

Designing Attention

What all of this points to is attention. Whether you are designing an interface or shaping a moment of your life, what matters most is where attention flows. The empty spaces in life are tools for guiding attention gently, giving it a place to rest and breathe.

A Practice of Pausing

The practice is simple. Notice the spaces between things. Pause between breaths. Listen not only to the sounds around you but also to the silence they emerge from and return to. Treat those moments not as gaps to be filled but as presences to be experienced.

Presence lives as much in the space around life as in the content of it. The question is not only what you fill your days with, but how you relate to the spaces in between.

Where in your life do you most notice the value of space? A room, in silence, in movement, or in your own thoughts?”