The Spaces Between
Written By Kirsten Mascarenas
I had just finished making my coffee when my hand reached for my phone.
Not because anyone had texted, and not because there was something urgent waiting for me.
I reached simply because there were thirty quiet seconds to fill.
I caught myself halfway through unlocking the screen and paused.
The kitchen was still. Morning light spilled across the counter, and it struck me how quickly I'd tried to escape a moment that, not all that long ago, I probably wouldn't have noticed at all.
Lately, I've been wondering if we've forgotten how to be still. Not in the grand, retreat-to-the-mountains kind of way.
Just in the ordinary moments.
Waiting for the kettle to boil.
Walking to the mailbox.
Driving across town.
Standing at the kitchen sink while dinner simmers on the stove.
Somewhere along the way, those little pockets of time stopped feeling like part of life and started feeling like wasted opportunities.
So we fill them.
A podcast.
A quick scroll.
One more email.
One more thing to cross off the list.
I told myself I was simply being efficient.
Making the most of my day.
But eventually I noticed something I couldn't ignore anymore.
The fuller my days became, the less present I felt inside them.
Everything seemed urgent.
Very little felt meaningful.
I wasn't just carrying my to-do list everywhere I went.
I was carrying the noise.
I don't think I realized how important transitions were until I stopped allowing them to exist.
The walk from one room to another.
The few quiet minutes before my boys wake up.
The pause in the car after grocery shopping..
These moments seem so ordinary that it's easy to overlook them.
But lately I've begun to wonder if they were never empty at all.
Maybe they were always meant to hold something.
A breath…or a thought that had been patiently waiting beneath all the noise.
A few evenings ago, I went out to my garden with no real purpose.
Everything had already been watered.
Deadheading the marigolds could have waited another day, but I stood there anyway.
The sun was beginning to sink behind the trees, and everything seemed to slow with it.
The breeze moved through the trees and the birds sang the evening to a close.
For a few minutes, nothing needed anything from me.
I wasn't solving a problem.
I wasn't answering a message.
I wasn't learning something new or trying to become a better version of myself.
I was simply there.
It occurred to me that gardens never seem to apologize for growing slowly.
They don't rush from seed to harvest.
They don't bloom all at once.
They trust the quiet work happening beneath the surface.
I wondered when I had stopped believing the same could be true for people.
The first few times I tried leaving those in-between moments alone, I was surprised by how uncomfortable it felt.
I'd reach for my phone before I even realized what I was doing.
Silence felt strangely unfamiliar, honestly, almost restless.
At first, I thought something was wrong.
Now I think the quiet was simply revealing what had been there all along.
The hurry.
The pressure.
The constant feeling that I should be doing just one more thing.
It's difficult to notice those things when every spare moment is filled.
Stillness has a way of bringing them gently into the light.
I've started treating transitions differently now.
Not perfectly.
Just more intentionally.
Some mornings I sit with my coffee before the rest of the house wakes up.
Other days I pause at the front door before walking inside, or letting one part of my day end before another begins.
Sometimes I leave my phone inside while I water the garden.
Sometimes I drive without music.
Sometimes I simply stand at the back door while the dogs wander through the yard.
Those moments don't look impressive from the outside.
No one would call them productive.
But they've quietly become some of the most meaningful parts of my day.
It's often there, in the spaces I once tried so hard to fill, that I notice what I'm actually feeling.
It's where ideas surface.
Where gratitude interrupts hurry.
Where I find myself talking with the Universe instead of rushing past it.
Where I remember that I actually belong to my own life instead of simply managing it.
For a long time, I believed rest had to accomplish something.
If I slowed down, I should be journaling.
Reading.
Meditating.
Learning.
Improving.
Even my version of rest came with expectations.
But I'm beginning to think we've misunderstood what stillness is for.
It isn't another item to complete.
It isn't a reward for finishing everything else.
It's the place where we begin hearing ourselves again.
This evening, I'll probably wander back into the garden.
I'll notice which peppers have ripened overnight.
I'll deadhead the flowers that turned crispy in the summer heat.
I'll stand there longer than I need to.
Not because there's work to do.
But because I've started believing that some of life's most meaningful moments happen when nothing remarkable is happening at all.
While the coffee brews.
While the garden grows.
While the dogs wander through the yard.
While the house is still quiet enough to hear my own thoughts again.
Perhaps that's what these little transitions have been trying to teach me all along.
That life isn't only found in the milestones we celebrate.
It's also waiting patiently in the ordinary moments between them.
And maybe those moments were never empty after all.
Maybe they were invitations, and we simply forgot how to accept them.
