When John Baldessari said, “Instead of looking at things, look between things,” he wasn’t just speaking as an artist—he was inviting us to change how we see the world. He was challenging us to go beyond the obvious, the concrete, the labeled, and to explore the spaces in between—the subtle, the nuanced, the often overlooked.
In art, “between things” might refer to the tension between shapes, the dialogue between colors, or the silence between sounds. In life, those “between” spaces are just as rich—sometimes even more telling than the big, bold milestones we chase.
We tend to fixate on outcomes: the job title, the wedding, the loss, the success, the failure. But what if the most transformative parts of life lie not in the things themselves, but in the moments in between?
It’s in the quiet uncertainty between decisions that we discover our values.
It’s in the space between heartbreak and healing that we learn resilience.
It’s in the stillness between words that empathy is born.
It’s in the ordinary days between life’s “big events” that real living actually happens.
If it the learning lessons between all the jolts and falls we live through.
When we “look between things,” we stop measuring life only by its achievements or crises. We start noticing the process, the layers, and the emotions that connect everything together.
The in-between is where the journey lives!
