Sound Is a Medium for Mindfulness // Pt. 2
“Every day of your life is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave…and true.”
-Audre Lorde
We all have different degrees of autonomy in how we choose to spend our days and organize our lives. A single person with two jobs has a different capacity than a small business owner and parent, who also has a different capacity than a college student. The responsibilities we carry or the people depending on us influence how and when we can find a moment of peace and stillness. While some of us have more built-in, accessible spaciousness than others, all of us have some level of autonomy within ourselves to curate the noise in our lives.
We must continually reclaim the possibility of stillness for ourselves.
Reality is a paradox. We’re constantly weaving in and out of actively writing our stories and then in the next breath, navigating curveballs we never saw coming. Sound reflects reality in this way, as sound is something we—most often—can’t control. Probabilistic like the world we live in, it goes and comes unannounced. But perhaps the very nature of sound’s unpredictability can allow us a safe container for nurturing a better relationship with reality. Sound presents itself as a powerful tool for identifying where to curate—where we can begin to reorient ourselves in how we relate to the noise that swirls without relenting.
We may quiet noise by quieting our response to the noise.
Mindfulness moves us into a better relationship with the spaces where we have a say while loosening the grip in the areas we can’t control. By learning how to recognize our inner emotions and thoughts, name them, and let them pass through us, we can practice more self-control, which also helps build greater agency. J Krishnamurti says, “to be free comes not from changing or fixing this world, but from seeing this world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.” I wonder, if we weren’t always so at odds with ourselves and with the world, could we then function from this liberated wisdom that’s never been more important as it is right now?
Your stillness belongs to you
You have a choice
With your mental energy
With your attention
Where to attune it
To bring it here
To give it away
To forget
You have a choice
How you listen
What posture you embody
When you accept
What comes
What goes
What stays with you
Pulse + Pause
Where can you exercise autonomy to reclaim the quiet needed in your own life? Write down what comes to mind.
We invite you to practice what you wrote down—embodiment becomes its own act of liberation.
A blessing:
You are here to be free
Free from the the external noise filling your being
Free to love and be loved, however that feels best to you
Free to feel the weight of your own depths and the levity in your feet
