The Echo of Life

The house echoes.  Slight movements create sounds that reverberate off of the empty spaces.  Artists call it 'negative space' - that which holds nothing, but defines 'something'. 

We have a lot of negative space.

One week ago, Diane and I literally sold everything. With the goal of simplification, we got rid of essentially everything we own.  Through this process, we came to a much better understanding of who we are, what we were and where we want to go.  Freeing up the baggage of the past - in a quite literal sense - unleashes quite a bit of emotion: some good, some bad.

We gave ourselves some guidelines to work with that forced us to have a hard line on what was to remain:

1. Only two suitcases full of clothes.
2. If you can't use it now, get rid of it.
3. If no one will buy it, give it away.

We knew we didn't need any of this; we just were not sure if our ideas could be realistically put into practice. 

Less is Always More

As we began to gather our material life to sell, we categorized, cleaned and appraised literally everything we own.  As we touched every part of our lives, old boy/girlfriends came out of hiding, bad decisions returned to haunt us and the voices of our family rang through loud and clear.  With all of that bad came the good.  Those moments when we picked up a picture that brought us back to an adventure past, a beach enjoyed or a person fondly remembered.

This process truly brought back the FULL range of emotions.

We were repeatedly asked, "Where are you moving to?" and "What's next?".  At first, I tried to truthfully answer them with, "I don't know."  Quickly I realized that most people cannot even imagine that level of ambiguity and it almost physically hurt them to try.  You could read it on their faces as they tried to wrap their minds around the concept.

I fell back on telling a 'little white lie' to soothe the masses.  When asked about the next phase, I came up with some stock answer of "Moving back to Mexico! Love it down there!"  The truth though, is far less clear.  I simply don't know. 

What I do know is that this frees up a weight.  It isn't a financial burden - though there is a monetary aspect to getting rid of everything - it is the emotional load that becomes overwhelming.  We are now free to follow whatever path is shown to us. 

The negative space is empty, that is true. 

The negative space is filled... with opportunity.