Sometimes I hear birds chirping over the snow. It can stop me in my tracks to hear such heaven. Their song of peace breaking up the cold often astounds me. Their sounds of awe and a calming joy can magnify the arresting subtleties of beauty around. I watch how the birds gather for seed, how they give room to each other when they dot the telephone wires, and how they give each other breathing room as they sing their own varied melodies. Even the industrious woodpecker has a stillness about him as he goes about his task.

It seems that an everyday standard of a natural agreeableness in the bird kingdom goes a long way.  Their friendly and open-minded way of living next to each other has value. And us? How can we make each day we live more harmonious in signature? And how can we find ways to share more of our worlds one with the other in a more peaceful and warming way?

Many of us are more conscious than others of how much impact we have on producing a good daily song. A good song is one that usually plays sweetly for everyone around us, too. It is self-enhancing as well as enhancing and helpful for the pleasure of many. Its tone is both generous and genuine in how it is delivered and amplified. It is not just about carrying a song in one’s own pocket. It is about a wider charge.

Most in the world tend to throw about a lot of loose change when it comes to connection, and sadly, the great many of us walk the world with a hole in our heart no matter how many material riches and opportunity can come our way. Our forgetting the power of how much we each can enhance relations in very simple ways in our own lives is the true source of what makes us feel poor. An open heart though, and so an open mind, is a way of doing things that invites perspective and integrates story. We enrich our lives more when we can do that.

When we train ourselves to live in a heart package that is tolerant and calmly adaptive to things, we can think out of the box more capably while being more present with each other, so in the here and now; and, when we live our days with a friendly heart, we also tend to approach things without an agenda in such a way that we can give our relations more breathing room and success.

An open heart seeks melody. It counterbalances cacophonies. This approach alone heightens purpose and energizes flow in such a way that mutual needs between people or personal goals get met more peacefully, efficiently, and smoothly. Indeed, open-mindedness alone would help the world go a long way if it were adopted as the primary approach in doing things.

How we attend to things, in fact everything we think and feel, energizes the world around us with a specific vibration, much like musical notes played on an instrument. Every step of the way in our day, we each create a wave. We can add or subtract from a greater symphony. Our intention also organizes our world, and the choices we make can in turn make our perceptions, our communications and our connections more harmonious or more dissonant. Said another way, how we go about things can produce beautiful music or noisy music. It’s up to us!

When we are mindful of the energy behind the things we do and feel, we better honour our capability to create a good peace of song with others. When we become lazy or self-important with our words and actions, and lazier yet as to how it impacts others, we run the risk of creating an uncomfortable noise, an unpleasantness in others, and a dissonance and underlying emptiness in our own lives. We then extend this wave of perception to our surrounding communities and how we experience the world around us.

Most of us speak without thinking. We often don’t consider how what we say and what we do relates to the satisfaction we feel in our hearts, to our families at a micro level, and to our world at a macro one, either. Most of us discard broad-minded goals and the most of us live in an awareness of short-term gains, if that. How can we each make ourselves more sweetly balanced to long-term consequences for the greater many, and in a thoughtful way?

In truth, we have a lot more impact and influence than we think. Our troubled oceans are one larger example of what happens when an open heart takes a back seat in how we go about our lives over an extended period of time. A company or a person or any system of operation that goes about life just focusing on how its balance sheet best floats and less about how others within that chain or around it may or may not sink is another. How we treat others each day really is a very big deal.

Indeed, everything that we say and that we do has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves in the expanse of our universe. These waves have a colour, a density, and a sound. Consider the intricacies of how things come together well or not in a symphony. The instruments are many and in all sizes with a variety of tonal distinctions, and yet they are independently in charge of how they harmonize. Patience, discipline and respect is what helps them get along to play beautiful and interesting music for us.

Imagine we were all respected instruments, no matter our shape, our level of prowess or our particular family. Imagine we took care of how we express things to each other and cared about our true intention behind things. Our world would be so much kinder and in a happier regard. Issues of trust would also significantly diminish. We would be more relaxed and clear-minded in our journey to our arrival over the winning ticket to our destination stop alone. That is why going about life with an open and peaceful heart is a wise choice. It is also not at all an easy thing.

Most people want their desired and expected input and that is it. They want their way and anything to protect their vision and nothing else. Most people don’t want to be bothered by the nuances in each other or to negotiate things along a path to arrival with common ground. Most of us today don’t consider others in our everyday doings and most of us don’t want to even have see. This is in fact why so many of us hear a different way of doing things as unwelcome chords, or “impositions”.  It is no wonder why so many of us are inflexible and increasingly intolerant to change.

In such a “set heart” mindset, we as much imagine things about others, and our assumptions get more easily in the way of simpler and deeper connection. We rarely see others in the world with a clear canvas. Nowadays, the great many of us more often than not connect to people, even within our families, in quick bites of time. Time is often accompanied by our distractions, our agendas and the collection of unresolved residue in other areas of our day that we can sometimes bring to the menu. We don’t look at each other and when we do we don’t see. The blind person often sees more than we do!

That we are now living in a fast-paced 24/7 “now” world of techno devices where communication is often passive, less meaningful and more falsely real doesn’t help. Face-to-face conversation and connection has almost become a dinosaur art. Television began the new age of this passive art and the remote control, especially in a child’s hand, subconsciously engages us to expect certain reactions of fulfillment on command.  It is no surprise then that people have become things or non-living objects to each other as we go about our day. And yet, what if we were full-bodied energies of presence to each other instead? Presence is purposeful. It leads and harmoniously connects. It just is. It is an energy that honours outcome and flow. This is the loving truth between all living things.

I challenge you to arrest your read and to take a fun two minute exercise of writing out a list of your favorite words. Choose and jot down ten, fifteen, or twenty. As you write each word, watch the energy that runs in your body. You may begin to notice that each word contains an energy. You will notice that as you then say the word aloud, each word then reverberates an energy or sensation back into your body and in the air around you. Experiment whispering the words on your list and saying it louder. The effect of your word symphony can be startling, even delightful.

This is but one fun way to increase your sensitivity to the instrument of language, your delivery as a musician as well as a conductor to it, and the power of words.  It is my sincerest hope that we each begin to better appreciate the instrument we have been playing. Can we find ways to begin to compose kinder messages to others and to each other with more beautiful notes? Look at the birds. They may be able to soar for a reason. We, too, can awaken our Spring in remarkable ways.

With our attention, we can take notice and begin to piece better notes to help shape a stronger key in our lives. You and I are an important string in the greater orchestra of life. We can strum, hum, or become dumb. So I ask, what notes would you like to add to your day? What wisdom song would you like to play?