For me this picture is an invitation: the calm before the storm, the little space before a workshop begins when you arrive in a beautifully set up room. You have time to notice where you are and how you are, take some tea, choose your favorite seat, start thinking about what you want to bring into the day, set an intention, watch the others arrive. Soon it is going to be crowded, messy, full of life. Also nice but different.

I tried several times to use this as a header or event announcement here but the feedback I got was always the same: No way! It feels awkward. It looks like no one showed up.

And then I would say: Whoever comes are the right people. And that sounded interesting but not convincing enough.

It made me wonder how often we confuse reality with interpretation. The room did not change. The stories did. And what becomes possible depends on how people make sense of what they look at.

And this is happening all the time: People can sit in the same meeting, at the same dinner table, experience the same situation, and leave with completely different interpretations of what happened.

I cannot stop being fascinated by this.

(I have to give credit that this has been one of the workshop spaces that have impressed me the most. My body still remembers the feel of it. And that is difficult to convey in pictures. My colleague said: You are in such a good mood! I said: It’s the room. There was so much care and air in it.)