Where's Your White Space?

I was working on a web page yesterday and looking at the white space, making sure to balance things and guide people's eye around the page so the page is simple, friendly, and fun to look at. Today I'm thinking about our lives and how white space plays out in them.

When your life is frantic and you're running from one activity to the next, you don't have any white space. When your days are full from the time your eyes open until you collapse into bed at night, you don't have any white space. When you see something beautiful and instead of stopping you immediately move faster, you don't have any white space.

What is white space? In print or in art it is the space between items on a page. It is the blank space where nothing is happening. So it seems it would be the same in our lives, it is the space between tasks, pauses in conversation, holes in our calendars. It is the moment when you stop to look at the stars or smell a flower. It is the time when you curl up in a chair and just stare out the window. It's the time where you really breathe, relax, and appreciate.

And we need white space in order to appreciate everything else going on in our lives. We need to pause in the middle of everything, if even for a second, to enjoy what we're doing.