The Space Between

Yes, that’s the name of a song by Dave Matthews Band. It’s stuck in my head, so naturally it became my morning prompt. However, it is the title that my mind locked onto instead of the meaning of the lyrics of this particular song.

When I scroll through my newsfeed on Facebook, or stop to reflect on the things that hold my network of friends together (both in cyberspace and in real life), I am amazed at how we maintain our friendships. The space between where I am and where many of my friends are is littered with an astonishing number of obstacles and differences.

Someone could build a road to the moon and back (at least) if it were constructed of these differences. Political views, religious beliefs, life priorities, the list is extensive. But what is clear is that there are these huge voids; these areas where there is no possibility that we will ever see eye-to-eye on these specific issues.

And right there I could end the relationship with any of these friends and say “we have little in common, so farewell.” The more you look for the differences, the more there appear to be… they multiply and divide and expand and… well, they are overwhelming.

The space between… we could try and build our relationships on the space between, but then we’d probably end up with very few friends. Or we’d end up with a bunch of friends that we’d be pretty bored with. And a lot of the world is doing that right now, building relationships only with people who hold the same views on a specific topic. I see it in political circles and religious circles; the divisive stance that much of society has adopted, which has lead to the current state of depressing obstructionism by both the left and right, the religious and non-religious, the educated and uneducated, the poor and the rich, and so on.

But I’ve chosen to live above that space between. I live in that area where I spend more time building on the things I can find in common… we can always have a conversation (respectful) about those things in the space between, but you can’t live there and be happy. Fortunately I have a diverse group of friends who have also seemed to adopt the idea of finding common threads.

Sure, I have some breaking points… there will always be issues that I can’t look past. There are people that I no longer talk to or connect with because they spew hate and refuse to be respectful of opposing views.

So I’ll venture into the space between from time to time to see if we can’t build a bridge on something else, but those trips will be less frequent than living in the space above.