Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed Falling Water, a house on a waterfall in Pennsylvania near Pittsburg, with the intention of constructing an organic structure in a natural state.

He also played with the idea of smaller, more cramped spaces that opened up into large spacious rooms that connect with the outside world. Guest rooms were constructed in a cell-like manner: and the rooms were just comfortable enough for a stay of one or two nights. He didn't want guests to overstay their welcome, I suppose. This also forced the guests to spend most of their time with their hosts in the open living spaces.

Graphic designers also play with white space in their designs to encourage people to read what they want read and perhaps to sway them from fine print.

Musicians switch from dominant chords to tonal chords; Jazz musicians seamlessly change from atonal to harmonic.

Writers construct their plots with the same idea in mind... Tension and release.

In our daily lives there are hundreds of moments in which we experience tension and release and over the long term we experience events that lock us in to states of extended stess. Often this happens without our knowledge until one day the stress is eliminated. The subsequent moment of clarity....well, it is of stunning beauty.

I suppose it is in our best interest to appreciate moments of strain as much as we appreciate the light of the sun after a canopy of darkness. Perhaps this is why I run. Sometimes it is the tension (in the form of pushing oneself), sometimes it is the release.