AS WELL AS CREATING the Space to Think, Connect, and Do there is a more fundamental thing we need to create Space for – and that is simply to Be. We live in a world where someone, somewhere is always switched on, always accomplishing, shipping, launching, succeeding or striving. Even before you get up, people on one side of the world are busy working away, and when you finish, those on the other side have just started. For anyone with a lot of ambition, the temptation to just keep going and going is strong. But this mentality ignores one crucial fact: we are human beings, not human doings, and we are not designed to be permanently productive.
The truth is, if you are waiting for things to slow down before you finally give yourself permission to stop and just be, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. We need to take care of ourselves, and work out who we are, what we want, and what we need, on a basic level, before we can try and master everything else. If we don’t, we run the risk of existing but not really living, and we run the risk of feeling lost or overwhelmed – experiencing what one psychoanalyst called the ‘nameless dread’. There are three areas where we need to take action to ensure that we are living worthwhile, happy and sustainable lives.
First, we need to Create Space to Dream. Too often we fall into things, or keep going out of habit or a lack of imagination. We feel the push to produce more, and don’t make space to sit still, take stock and think, on a deeper level, about what it is that we want from life and how we might achieve it. As we will see with Oscar, doing this can save us from a depressing decline and free up all sorts of possibilities.
Second, we need to Create Space to Balance. We are all holistic human beings who require more than money and ‘success’. Our health, inner contentment and our spiritual lives are important too. In the modern, busy world we can easily lose sight of these things. Trevone clearly did. He had a short, sharp shock that the rest of us will, with luck, avoid but that we can nonetheless learn from.
Finally, we need to Create Space to Grow. Not only do we need to feel we are learning and growing in our jobs, but that this is also happening in our lives. As we go through the phases of life what we want changes, and being open to experimenting and taking risks allows us to discover what that might be. As Almantas’s story shows, leaving our comfort zone and making some tough choices can help us to move to the next stage of what life has to offer.
All three stories reveal how being open can help us to challenge BAU (business as usual). We must allow ourselves to dream, make sure we are taking care of ourselves and relentlessly question the path we are on. That way we will have the best chance of living life to the full.