Listening begins before sound. It begins as a willingness to be touched by what is already here. When listening deepens, it widens beyond the ear and gathers breath, posture, mood, memory, and silence into one living moment. 

Year's end brings a reckoning with what remains unfinished.  The projects abandoned mid-flight, plans folded back into drawers, ideas that never crystallized. We live in a world that measures us by what we produce, and so incompletion arrives wearing the mask of failure.

But the hunger for completion is infinite. 

We often imagine that art is something we make. But your life is already shaping itself in every breath, every choice, every shift of attention.

Your life is already art.

There is a quiet wisdom in letting life move without interference.

Each attempt to fix or manage creates another complication. When you step back, a steadier rhythm becomes clear, one that does not rely on control.

Recently, I led a workshop on Zen and meditation at a local college. The students were open and inquisitive, but I could sense their apprehension about being beginners.

They spoke of meditation as a steep climb, wondering how to move from the frustrations of a novice to the calm of a master. I assured them that the mind of a beginner is the best place to be.

When we stand before a work of art, we might think we’re looking at something outside ourselves, be it a painting, a sculpture, or an image created by another. Yet what we see reflects the one who is seeing.

One cold midwinter day, I went through my old notebooks—my collections of creative ideas, sketches, and scribbles. As I turned the pages, I was struck by the sheer volume of thoughts, half-formed concepts, and expressions.