Discover Peace in Life's Contradictions

(clicking) (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) (gentle music) Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to Radio Headspace, and to Tuesday morning. So just recently, I was thinking back to a time where I was asked what was the most important thing that I had learned in the monastery. And look, there's so many different things. It's always really hard to pick one, but I tend to just say whatever kind of springs to mind when I'm asked, 'cause I don't have like a rehearsed answer in my mind, of it was A, B, and C. I was talking at the time with, it was actually a group of young students, and the thing that immediately came to my mind, and I don't know if it was the best example necessarily, but I said, "Although it sounds paradoxical, everything in life matters. At the same time, nothing in life matters that much at all. It's a paradox, and yet part of life is getting comfortable with that paradox." Now, for some of those students, that really landed. For some of the students, they were like, "That makes no sense whatsoever. You know, you're contradicting yourself." But there is something interesting in those two positions both being relevant in our life and maybe not contradictory. Maybe they can even compliment one another. When I look at my life and the people in my life that I'm fortunate to have, there really isn't a moment where I can say it's not important. There are definitely moments where I feel like I'm doing things that are more sort of precious or important or something, but actually, every moment, right, it's another moment. Well, apart from anything else, it's another moment that we're alive, but it's another moment to appreciate just being present, being here, having the people around us in our lives that we have. We can't really say that, well, that moment over there, that just didn't matter that much. Sure, we might be doing something that retrospectively we feel was less important than something else, but it wasn't that the moment didn't matter. It was just in that moment we chose to do something that for whatever reason doesn't stick in our mind or resonate in the same way. So each and every moment has a sort of a vital importance. At the same time, there is a sense, right, of coming and going, that we're born and we die, and that life is constantly moving and shifting in this way. And in that sense, when I say nothing matters, it's not in a negative sense that nothing matters, 'cause then that brings us back to the other bit, right? Everything matters vitally. It's vitally important that we're kind and generous and everything else in life, but in those moments when it feels like life is getting too much and we're getting too caught up in the little things of life, it's actually really helpful to lean into the other side,...