The Sweet Spot between Doing and Being

Activity balanced with rest: it's the way all of nature works, a beautiful reminder that everything is in ebb and flow. Our own bodies follow natural patterns, recuperating every night and preparing for the next day's action. With music as well, the structure imposed by notes inherently depends on the unstructured space supporting it. As a culture, though, we give more importance to creating notes and relatively little to the space between them. Sure, our rational minds want to ensure progress -- but our intuitive minds need space for the emergent, unknown and unplanned to arise. Within the existing paradigm, the external comes first, the internal takes a backseat, and in deference to measurability, we become more tuned in to doing than to being. The problem isn't in the doing per se: the secret to more balance lies in how we frame our efforts.

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