Note: The text below is the transcript of the YouTube video above.
Why do we fear empty space so much?
An empty calendar makes you feel guilty. Empty hangers in your wardrobe make us want to buy more clothes. An empty moment makes you reach for your phones.
But in this garden in Kyoto, emptiness is not something to fear. It’s everything.
Steve Jobs called it ‘the most sublime thing’ he’d ever seen. John Cage, who composed four minutes of silence, created an entire body of work inspired by this place.
Fifteen rocks. White gravel. Nothing else.
This is Ryoan-ji. And hidden in its emptiness is a Japanese philosophy that might just change the way you see your own life.
There’s a word in Japanese called “Ma”. There’s no single English word that captures its full meaning, but it refers to the space, the pause, the gap between things—both in time and in physical space. It’s the idea that emptiness and silence give meaning to everything around them.
But why does this ‘nothing’ hold so much power? What if neuroscience says emptiness in our lives is the key to innovation?
And for me, that fear of blank time was very real.
Hi, I’m Satomi. I’m finally back in Japan!
As a Japanese artist living in London for 8 years, I filled every single moment. Juggling a full-time job with my creative work, I was completely burnt out.
So I quit my job and left London. I spent almost three months in the south of France and Italy, searching for a new path.
But the more I saw of Europe, the more I kept asking myself a question I couldn’t answer: What was the ‘Japanese something’ at the root of my own art? I realised I didn’t truly understand my own culture.
So I decided to go back to Japan to find my answer. And I’ve chosen my favourite city, Kyoto, to be my base for a while.
I rented an apartment and started visiting temple gardens. It had been a while since I’d seen them in person, and I fell in love with them all over again. Japanese nature moves me deeply. I don’t know if it’s because I’m Japanese. Tell me if you’ve ever felt that same nostalgia that you can’t put into words when seeing Japanese gardens.
Anyway, I came to one of the most well-known temples for its garden, Ryoan-ji.
This is one style of Japanese garden called karesansui, which literally means ‘dry landscape garden.’ No water. No flowers. Just rocks and gravel.
Every morning, a monk rakes these patterns into the white gravel. These lines represent water, flowing around the rocks like islands in a sea.
When Steve Jobs first came here, his chauffeur explained: There are fifteen stones, but you can never see all of them at once. Jobs immediately started searching for that perfect angle. He couldn’t find it. ‘Fifteen means completion,’ the chauffeur said, ‘but we can’t see all fifteen because we’re still works in progress.’ Jobs stopped. He nodded and just kept looking.
I sat down on the engawa, the wooden veranda too.
Japanese gardens invite you to experience them with all your senses. Not just seeing, but hearing—the sound of leaves rustling, birds calling, the wind moving through the trees. My body started to relax. I could feel something shifting inside me. Like my mind and body were finally recharging.
By the way, have you ever listened to John Cage’s ‘4′33″’? It’s a piece of complete silence
—the performer sits at the piano and doesn’t play a single note. He wasn’t writing music. He was composing Ma. Asking us to listen to the sounds we usually ignore.
Decades later, Cage visited this very garden, and he was so deeply moved that he devoted years to a series of works titled Ryoanji
But I noticed something else. Even in this peaceful place, part of my mind was still racing. Still whispering: ‘Are you wasting time right now? Shouldn’t you be doing something productive?’
But I kept visiting other karesansui gardens across Kyoto. Daitoku-ji, Tofuku-ji… Each garden seemed to speak the same quiet message to me.
I even attended meditation sessions at a temple in Kyoto to practise stillness.
And slowly, I started to feel different. My mind became calmer. Perhaps it’s just because I came back to my roots. I think the Japanese rhythm resonated with who I am now.
Horror vacui. This is our modern disease. The fear of empty space. We fill every moment, every silence, every gap in our lives because we feel uncomfortable with emptiness.
But here’s what neuroscience actually proves: our brains need empty space to make unexpected connections, to boost creativity. Without Ma, without these gaps, we’re literally exhausting our capacity for original thought.
When I heard about this research from a professor friend who studies this in London, I started to feel less guilty about having ‘non-productive’ time in my life.
And that’s when everything clicked.
Looking back at my time in the south of France, I now realise that was Ma. That ’empty’ time I thought I was wasting, that was exactly what I needed after the hectic life in London. Because being in that emptiness, something finally became clear. What I want to create with my life started to take shape. Without that Ma, I don’t think this vision would have ever come to me. I’ll share more about this dream as we go, so stay with me!
And there was another benefit to being on my own and creating empty space in my mind—I started to truly understand what I really like. What I really believe is good.
In our overwhelming social media world, I feel like my tastes, my beliefs, even my dreams sometimes feel like they’re shaped by what I constantly see online.
Being on my own, talking to myself, really helped me understand what I truly care about. Now I feel like I know myself better. And I won’t be as easily influenced by external noise anymore.
If you’re watching this and feeling that familiar overwhelm, that sense that you’re drowning in your own busy life, I want you to know: you’re not alone and you are not broken.
The world is just very loud right now. And it’s forgotten how to be quiet.
What if we bring Ma into our daily life?
We can start small.
For example, at the start of each week, look at your calendar and decide when you can take a couple of hours just for yourself that week. Don’t meet anyone. Don’t schedule anything. I know this might feel impossible, especially if you are busy.
And when you open your wardrobe and see empty space, don’t rush to fill it. Leave that space empty. Resist the urge to fill it.
Steve Jobs also understood this when he kept returning to these gardens: Innovation doesn’t come from grinding harder. It comes from the confidence to leave space empty. To trust that in the nothing, everything can emerge.
This philosophy of Ma, of embracing emptiness, it’s not just in Japanese gardens. In Japanese flower arranging, tea ceremony, and calligraphy… I’ll walk you through these in future videos.
Next time, I’ll share another interesting story about the Japanese gardens that inspired me.
So lastly, I created this YouTube channel a few months ago, and honestly, I hope this becomes more than just me talking at you. I’d love for this to become a space where we all connect—like we’re sitting together, sharing what we’ve learned, what we’re struggling with, and what inspires us. So please, leave a comment—and talk to each other too.
So tell me: Do you ever feel like you’re too busy to think about yourself? And if you’ve found ways to create quiet time in your life, what’s your secret? Or are you still struggling with that constant sense of urgency? I read every single comment, and I’d love to hear what works for you.
Thank you, really, for giving me these precious minutes of your day. If this resonated with you, please subscribe. That will really help me work on my projects that I really want to make happen.
From one busy human to another: remember that it’s okay to stop. It’s okay to be empty. In fact, it might be the most important thing you do today.
See you next week in Kyoto.
