“Although you have mastered the words, you haven’t yet mastered the blank spaces.” – The Witch of Portobello, Paolo Coelho

We live such a busy life that we sometimes forget how to enjoy the blank spaces, how to master them without feeling anxious and alone. While Louis CK rants about this feeling of anxiety and loneliness in a funny talk on Conan, we all know there’s more to it than just having a good laugh at his somewhat trivial jokes. It’s about those moments of mindfulness of allowing ourselves to be alone, to feel whatever we’re feeling whether that means bursting into laughter or into tears.

But what happens when we actually do master the blank spaces, when we can be in that “empty” moment or that “overwhelming” moment without feeling like we have to run away, to hide, to cover it somehow, to make it seem like it’s not happening. In a recent meditation class held by my friend Aumrie, I allowed myself to do exactly that, to be in that blank space without any desire to run away, to think about anything else, without telling myself that I should feel something else. And what I found in the middle of that blank space was this incredibly happy and peaceful moment. The kind of happiness that opens up into a million possibilities of love and appreciation, the kind of peacefulness that allows for the entire universe to come together…and all of the sudden, everything fell into place.