The past few days I have been thinking back to a radio piece I produced in 2006, a documentary called “Practicing Awareness” that was, on the surface, about the Japanese bamboo flute known as the shakuhachi, but was really about learning how to be in the world. The lesson that has been coming back to me, expressed in the piece by psychotherapist David Weiss, is not to ask “What do I have to do?” each day, but rather, “How do I want to be?” Weiss answers that how he wants to be each day is open and present to whatever is there.
This has been a great reminder to me that no matter what irritating details I have to deal with each day, no matter what irksome event comes my way, I always have the ability to just turn to my breath, to be in the world in a different way. I have put the piece on YouTube with a simple video overlay intended to enhance its mindfulness message and hopefully provide a respite of calm reflection and recentering to viewers.