Seth Godin recently wrote :
“Since the dawn of the industrial age, tighter has been the goal. A tighter system, with less slack. Tighter connection with customers.
The thing is, tighter is fine when you’re trimming a sail or optimizing a production system.
But many things in our lives need to be looser. More room for innovation. More slack for peace of mind. More spaces for surprise.”
This week I have had an extraordinary experience as part of the beta test of the Modern Elder Academy in Baja. The concept and philosophy are powerful and of huge value to the world. The curriculum is excellent and the facilitators amazing.
What makes it most extraordinary though is the environment, and that includes leaving space. As I wrote in “Listening, your Superpower” :
The French composer Debussy said: “La musique, c’est ce qu’il y a entre les notes”. The poetically translated English version is “Music is the space between the notes”. The French more literally translates to “Music, it is what is between the notes”
In that post, I share my knowledge on what makes for great listening, and the greatest part is to listen to the “space between the notes”.
At the Modern Elder Academy, the magic is in the space between the notes.
A few past participants, so used to their busy task and goal oriented lives, have begged for more content, more teaching, more notes, more things “to do” both at the Academy and when they get back.
To me, I’d encourage the reverse. Be ever more in nature, create experiences to embed learnings through feelings, or “Sentio ergo sum“.
In all of our lives, let us have the intentionality, commitment, discipline to leave space.