It seems that as life has gotten faster and faster, we humans have managed pretty well to keep up with the speed. But I I believe Gandhi: “That there is more to life than increasing its speed.” In fact, I’d suffice to say that things get better by decreasing their speed. Slow is good.

Enter rituals. Rituals slow us down and connect us to this moment here and now. I’m not talking about big, ornate cultural or religious  rituals. Instead I’m referring to simple actions that connect us to ourselves, our place, and the present moment.

These kind of rituals allow us to both forget ourselves and our worries, and to escape into the present moment. They allow us to enter flow – the state of being where we’re actually not thinking, not aware of any single thing other than the act of what we are doing.

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Only in emptiness can we be truly creative and imaginative.

Like an empty teacup or a blank sheet of paper, emptiness is unlimited potential. In emptiness, literally anything can happen.An idea, a scribble, a masterpiece, a to-do list, a mind map. It’s when clutter and noise and distraction fill us up that there is little room left for greatness. So if emptiness is so great, how come we don’t all achieve more of it? Because emptiness is really scary.

Ask any writer staring at a blank screen “how do you feel?” Writer’s block is total sweaty-palmed panic. An interesting analogy can be made between emptiness and the color white. White is not color. It is the absence of all color, ie “empty.”

The Japanese character for white is this:

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