Express Yourself
The Art of Staring Into Space
Creativity happens when you find the courage to do absolutely nothing
I spent much of my time in school staring out of windows. In class, I only had to glance at the birds wheeling in the sky and I would be lost for a minute, two, 10, 20… until my teachers yelled at me for daydreaming and broke the spell.
But I wasn’t daydreaming. Dreaming implies dreams. It implies content. But I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. I was just staring out the window into space.
My teachers would sometimes ask me, “What’s so interesting outside the window?” I never could give a good answer. I wasn’t really looking at anything. So I usually shrugged, mumbled an apology, and tried to focus again on my schoolwork.
After a few minutes, inevitably, my mind wandered again, my pen lifted from the page, I looked out of the window, and…
I used to be so good at staring into space. I was an expert. World-class. But school trained me out of it.
By the time I hit my twenties, I had lost the ability to get absorbed in the not-quite-nothing there in the middle distance. I had internalized the disapproval of my teachers, so if I caught myself in the act, I would stop and remind myself to…
