Living In The Gap

Mind the Gap! Living in the Gap by Mark Nepo     It is the writer’s privilege to help one endure by lifting up his heart. —William Faulkner   When I was thirty, I traveled to London for the first time to visit a friend in grad school. I immediately felt the history in the old buildings and streets. On my second day there, we took the Underground from Victoria Station. As our train arrived, I realized that the space between the platform and the train was much greater than in the States. I looked at the edge of the platform. And there, etched in the concrete, was the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” The phrase instantly seemed an instruction from the gods. Mind the gap between stillness and motion. Mind the gap between who we are and who we hope to be. Mind the gap between what’s visible and what’s not. Mind the gap between inner life and outer life. The phrase has stayed with me ever since—for our search for meaning depends on how we mind the gap and how we enter the spaces between things. While a tree is all leaves, the life of the tree is in the spaces filled with wind between the leaves. And while we are the sum of our actions and words, the life of who we are is in the spaces filled with Spirit between our actions and words. In time, minding the gap leads to entering the gap, which leads to living in the spaces between what is known and what remains unknown. The gap between the details of the world is where we find the invisible energy that holds everything together. On my return from that first trip to London, I became a student of the gap between what we…

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