A walking meditation and minding the gap. Issue #95.
A walking meditation and minding the gap. Issue #95.
Also: as designers, what can we do? Plus Little Fires Everywhere and an animated video recommendation.
Last weekend, I took part in a solo walking meditation. This was a more deliberate, delicate and determined walking meditation than I was used to.
It was slow. And I mean s l o w.
Walking meditations can take many forms. They can be a stroll in your neighborhood, and with your senses and your mind both open, you observe everything — sounds, sites and situations — with openness, care and attention: an encounter with everything that arrives and departs. The idea is to see impermanence in motion, to recouple mind and body, to jar the tractor beam of thought, and to recognize clear scene, something which is always, amazingly there.
This walking meditation was a little different. It took place over the course of two twenty minute sessions (and was part of a multi-week course I’m completing online with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield called The Power of Awareness). I started with both feet planted on the ground and set out to walk slowly for 10 paces, stop, and walk 10 paces back. I took my gnarly left foot off the ground, watched it rise up and quietly advance in the air, until it softly rested on the floor. Once the left foot was down, I slowly picked up and moved my gnarly right foot until it, too, was gently placed on terra firma. I did this again and again — each step taking about 10 seconds. Basically, I was walking.
But very, very slowly.
While walking, I observed these bare feet as they moved through time and space — one foot up, up, up, and then down it would go, again, until both feet were planted. After ten steps forward, I caught my breath (it’s surprisingly hard to walk with so much concentration) and turned around, heading back.
It really sounds kind of boring. Perhaps it’s just my description! But it wasn’t. I had numerous observations over the course of 40 minutes. And perhaps the one most relevant here is this: when walking, there is a small yet noticeable and consequential gap during and between steps.
That gap is a strained and strange one. Every time a new step is taken, the planted foot has to support the entire weight of the body. If you watch it, which I did, that poor foot actually wiggles a little back and forth while it “anticipates” the other foot’s imminent arrival. This grounded foot, awaiting its jet-setting mate on the tarmac, has nothing to do but keep the whole colossus upright. And there is a gap, in which for a few seconds at least, the grounded foot does not know what the hell to do. Will the other foot arrive? How much longer will it be? Am I stuck here forever? The planted foot quietly flounders while the other foot is in flight.
(Sidebar: A recent article in The New York Times called Can You Pass the 10-Second Balance Test? notes that balance training can be helpful as we age: “A study in June by a Brazilian team found that 20 percent of the 1,700 older adults tested couldn’t balance on one leg for 10 seconds or more. And that inability to balance was associated with a twofold risk of death from any cause within 10 years.” I may — or may not — report personal test results in a future missive.)
I believe that all gaps are interesting. The gap of imbalance, in which one foot is aware of its importance in keeping the body upright while the other foot is in transition, is much like all other gaps — precarious yet also full of possibility. Breaks, transitions, pauses, respites — these are moments when we can become more fully aware of ourselves and our surroundings, when the next thing planned may or may not happen, when astonishment or incredulity enters the equation. Forthwith, a gap.
(Hey. Okay. Take a moment — what did that gap make you feel or think? For me, looking at that gap in the preview of this email actually filled me with mild dread and confusion. Will I lose them? But I guess you’re still reading, which I appreciate.)
It’s these gaps between discrete places, between moments of conversation and connection, that I think deserve investigating. The pregnant pause is called that because it is full of the unknown. In visual design, white space (or negative space) as discussed in a previous post, is where we rest and so often return.
In practical terms, the gap between standing on one foot and then standing on both feet is both strange and strained. Like all gaps, it feels vulnerable. The body is unsteady and the mind is unprepared for what is next.
Getting up from your desk to get a sandwich. Closing your laptop to call your therapist. Sitting down to pet your pet. Meditation teachers instruct their students to pause during transitions in order to break free from the noise, chaos and chatter that is around and inside us. It is in that pause where I believe we can reconnect again with our most immediate surroundings and see that we do not need to be captured by thinking — and that we are part of and parcel of the ever-present glorious moment.
Designers, mind the gap
For designers, primed on productivity, taking a break can be trying.
But I argue that there is a beautiful uncertainty that arises when looking up, pausing (even for a single minute) and then getting back at it. Shorter pauses, while walking or standing or getting outside, can be incredibly generative, at least for me. Longer pauses can lead to breakthroughs; by sleeping on an idea, I can almost guarantee that a creative leap will ensue the next day. Even a few seconds to shake my head, jog in place (when no one is looking), or stretch my arms and legs, can be recuperative. (I should note that taking an honest break to mind the gap does not mean the following: checking email, visiting Substack, or texting your ex. These are attention-stealing behaviours and are universally disqualified by, well, every teacher of meditation.)
The harsh reality is that, when I’m working, I typically don’t want to pause and do nothing. Like that foot sitting on the ground, there is something scary about not knowing what is on the other side. Will I get back to it? What will happen? Fear of quiet and stillness and not knowing — and moreover, of “wasting” time — these are some of the things that hold me, and many of us, back.
But we do need the time to reconnect with ourselves and with the world that holds us.
My hunch is that designers especially are not taking enough actual breaks — that we are not taking it all in and we are not minding the gap. We are madly lost. The majesty of each moment, the beauty of what is before us — these are what connect us to ourselves, to our natural world, and to the various contingencies that make up both. Distracted to death, it is becoming ever harder to disconnect.
Will a walking meditation disable distraction? Will sitting still at your desk for a full minute? No. But either one offers us a means to be more deliberate, to connect with our bodies again, and to see our feet as they truly, truly are.
What can designers do?
A dear reader, in response to my angst about the overturning of Roe in Issue #97, asked what we / they / all of us can do.
I have been reflecting on this for some time. The question of design activism has been with us for about 150 years — since the advent of the poster and the rise of mass communications. With Roe and so many other massive challenges bearing down upon us — and with the probability of accelerating, compounding issues coming due — what can designers do?
It is a bit binary, but I believe that we can mostly ask design to do one of two things: push or pull.
Design can push important ideas into the world. We can create messages, memes and marvels: websites, words, imagery, zines, code, and, more generically, “content”. As visual communicators, designers can prod by producing. To create substantive change, the pushing also has to be clear, clever and, ideally, crafty. An example might be these Russian artists/designers who are very bravely protesting the war against Ukraine.
Alternatively, design can pull many people together. We can create platforms, products and practices: conferences, networks, frameworks and systems that connect us and move us forward together. Creating new pulls is easier now and yet ever-more difficult. An example might be the Climate Designers collective which fosters climate crisis-related knowledge sharing, community and training.
Of course, with each push there is a pull, and in every pull, a push. We need both to happen, even inelegantly, if designers are to help mitigate the worst effects of what is on offer over the coming decades. It is entirely doable if we learn to come together, joining forces locally and internationally.
I also recognize that this answer is an oversimplification to a very hard question.
I hope you will consider including your answer to “What designers can do?” in the Comments section below. I would love to hear from you and I’m sure others would, as well.
Reading: I recently finished Celeste Ng’s glorious work of fiction Little Fires Everywhere. It’s a story of numerous families, who live in the suburban town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and who interact in predictable and unpredictable ways. The story sets up one character, an artist, against a predominantly upper middle-class culture that thrives on progress, certainty and consistency. Issues of race, class, ethnicity, age and immigration — all are on display here. We are left sympathetic to everyone’s proclivities, regardless of their actions and fate. Ng shows that we are, all of us, products of our milieu, our upbringing, our social obligations, and our daily interactions. The story makes the case that are we are all innocent — young and old, small and tall, bumping along from one thing to the next. We do the best we can because, well, we have no other choice. Set in the 1990s, Ng also relishes, perhaps to a fault, in the details of that time: the cars, food and clothing are so accurately described that I could feel them jump off the page.
Watching: If you have about nine minutes, check out this short animated feature called Do Not Feed the Pigeons by Antonin Niclass, a young European animation director and filmmaker. The people are flat but the story is not. It is beautifully told and elegantly animated. In fact, you will forget that it was made entirely of still objects, moving, s l o w l y.
This newsletter is a strange labor of love. And I literally could not do it without you. If you like Gornisht (or really anything about it), please consider sharing it with others. Here’s a button that Substack made for doing just that.
Thank you for being here. As always, my gratitude if you are a paid subscriber.
Wishing you a very good week ahead.