Blank-Screen Moments

I sit and stare at the bright, white, blank screen. Two minutes. Five minutes.

Write a sentence. Erase it.

Realize it's 12pm. Get up and get myself a bowl of yogurt and granola (mmmhmm good).

Sit down. Finish the yogurt. Get up and fetch myself a picturesque little mason jar of water (how quaint).

Sit down again. Curses.

The screen is still white.

What? The words didn't write themselves by now?

Not fair.

It's one of those blank screen moments in life. Those moments where you feel like you're wading through sludge, through miles of a white, wordless fog, where the absence of logical, organized thought taunts you. You're trapped in a never ending cycle of waiting, where there is nothing to do except wait...and yet waiting still feels so irrational. Waiting for what? For the words to write themselves? For Life to suddenly streak across your blanched surroundings with a flourish of trumpets and a shower of fairy dust? For the faded black scribbles to make sense?

Sometimes, our landscapes feel so dull, boring, and barren. Not barren as in dead - to be sure, there is plenty of wild grass and untrimmed foliage to fill the space - but for now, the world still feels barren...flat and lifeless. The grass has not been tended, no beautiful beds of soil have been fertilized, no forests have been planted, no mountains have been built, no flowers have been tenderly brushed across the landscape to caress it with their warm splashes of color. Not yet, anyway.

Waiting.

You can close your eyes and imagine what your landscape will look like, dream up the treasures your world will encompass, but  to what extent can our dreams really influence reality?

You can take those dreams and awaken them, try to re-create with your brush the flowers and trees and mountains you imagined, but to what extend can you create your landscape?

Is the landscape to be created? Or is it to be discovered?

Do we make it happen? Or do we wait, anxiously, on the edge of our seat, for the mountains and trees and flowers to suddenly spring up out of nowhere? 

Do we truly explore? Or do we wander aimlessly, glancing over our shoulder every couple yards, hoping that a new world will have sprouted while we weren't looking?

Or.

Perhaps the landscape something that is being constantly created. Even when we are distracted by looking for what we hope to see, feeling as though nothing is changing, our hearts are being prepared and our world is slowly being shifted.

In truth, I am exploring the landscape that is being created for me. I am being guided along the path that has been laid out for me, and experiencing all the surprises along the way. Even if the flowers I am hoping to see never color my landscape, the beauty that will capture my heart will, one day, take my breath away with it's glorious sunrise.

One day. Hopefully soon.

This I must believe, or else drive myself insane, despairing over what I fear I might lose.

So I do believe. And I will wait.