A brilliant healer friend of mine recently gave me homework: “You always write about the space around you, what you see, how others respond to their surroundings. Why don’t you spend some time writing about the inner space?” I am continually obsessed by the contention that our inner space is shaped by our outer space. But instead of exploring that orientation (again and again), here goes an attempt at only the inner space. 

I am a chronic anticipator. I anticipate what will happen next, how it will happen, and often I anticipate the worst in order to pre-grief whatever might await. As Rebecca Solnit writes, “Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t–and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.” 

So when another friend of mine (a visionary artist) shared his debilitating worry about whether a commission would go through with an important client, I told him about what I try to do in those moments of self-doubt or worry. Imagine that “worry thought pattern” inside your brain. Give it a color and watch it traversing across your scalp. Now, erase it; start at one end and smudge it out inch-by-slow-inch. With that new vacant space, draw a vibrant healthy thought pattern in a different color. Do this every time that “worry thought pattern” appears. Eventually, you reprogram yourself. 

That’s an inner space I can visualize. We make grooves in our brain and our heart. Usually those grooves are worn-down roads. Despite the difficulty of traveling these roads, we like strolling down them again because they are familiar. I wonder about all the uncharted pathways in our inner spaces. There’s a fact floating around out there that humans only use 10 % of our brain. The possibility, the possibility, the possibility. And what of the heart?