“Just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops in a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope to die in, is exactly this middle distance: where the despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.”

Be present as the watcher of your mind - of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don‘t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, or observe the reaction. Don‘t make a personal problem out of it.

If he could translate... how the sun shone and the rain fell and which way the wind blew agains this trunk for how hard and long. He might decode the vast projects that the soil organized, the murderous freezes, the suffering and struggle, shortfalls and surpluses, the attacks repelled, the years of luxury, the storms outlived, the sum of all the threats and chances that came from every direction, in every season this tree ever lived.