Mindful Music Wednesdays: Anthems of Resilience

(shaker sifting) (mouse clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (upbeat music) Greetings, greetings. Welcome to Radio Headspace. My name is Kessonga, and it's a Wednesday. Let's shift gears into our Mindful Music segment, where I, once again, highlight certain lyrics from a disclosed song that has some kind of special mindful meaning for me. And as always, I'll reveal the song towards the end of the episode. Okay, so today's lyrics are short and sweet, because if I gave you much more, (laughing) you'll probably guess it right away. Here they are. "They stack the odds 'til we take to the street, for the kill with the skill to survive." So in yesterday's episode, I spoke about hopefulness and hopelessness. And I mentioned how resilience can be extremely helpful in maintaining and/or restoring our sense of being hopeful. (inquisitive music) As it would have it, when writing today's episode, I came across this particular song that inspired me to kind of piggyback off of yesterday's discussion, particularly this idea of resilience. So for sure, resilience can help to restore our sense of hopefulness, no doubt about that. And it can also give us the strength to endure stressful situations where we are completely out of control. "The strength to survive," that's what came up for me when I read these lyrics. I'll say them again, "They stack the odds 'til we take to the street, for the kill with the skill to survive." So even in those moments where the odds are stacked against you, we have the resiliency to survive and come out on the other side still whole. We might be a bit scarred, but whole nonetheless. (upbeat music) It actually reminds me of something that happened when I was in the eighth grade. For some reason, the most popular guy in school, who also happened to be a bit of a bully, he wanted to fight me. Well, I'll take that back. I knew why he wanted to fight me. (laughing) I had written a pretty spicy love letter to his girlfriend. (laughing) So he wanted to fight me, but he knew that he would get suspended, so he outsourced (laughing) the help of his older cousin, who was already in high school, to come and fight me. And I'll never forget this day because his cousin sucker punched me after school, right there in the New York City streets. Needless to say, it was on. We were brawling, and I was actually winning against a high schooler. But then it happened, I didn't even see the pile of dog doo-doo on the street, and I stepped in it and I slipped to the ground. The cousin took advantage and pounced on me. From there, it was all over. It was a shitty situation. (laughing) Y'all had to see that pun coming. (laughing) And I had to travel home on the train smelling like doo-doo. But that's how it is sometimes, right? You just have to endure. With...