Sometimes I wonder what funny creatures we humans are. We have all these contradicting tendencies that live side by side in us. Sometimes one of them comes out and wins. At other times everything in us is pulling in different directions so we are not moving at all.

As musicians, we are always trying to be better than we were the day before. Music is an ideal. We know, we will never ever be able to reach this impeccable perfection, this big absolute. But we put our heart and soul into being the best possible version of ourselves.

This makes us great critics. We are actively investigating and looking for all the mistakes and flaws we make. We try to proactively improve everything connected to our art in every way. We are musical improvement detectives at work!>>

I guess we all like the idea, that others think highly of us. What does that mean? In our fantasy we are praised and loved by everyone. In our wild dreams we walk around like peacocks fancying with the idea of being a person that everybody admires.

Let’s get real for a second. This truly is just a fantasy and nothing more.
Nobody is liked by everyone.
If people choose to like us, that’s great. But some (or many) won’t.
And you know what? That’s fine too!

We do not have to be looked up to. That is neither necessary nor healthy.>>

In todays world there seem to be two lifestyle fads, everybody recommends.
The first one is meditation, the second one is goal setting.

The first one for me personally is a nightmare.
I am one of those folks who is unable to sit still. I am always moving like that pesky kid at school who was super annoying.

Sitting still in frog posture – or what was that? Bug sitting? Wait… cross legged lotus pose!!! And waiting that illumination starts hitting me unfortunately is out of reach for me. Please forgive me for staying ignorant as always. But for some reason, I am ok with that.

The second one seemed awkward too.
Goal setting in real terms means sitting at a table and writing stuff down that I wish to come true.>>

The upcoming holiday season always seems to work like a magnifying glass in social affairs. We can see in bold letters what the essence of a relationship looks like.
In many cases, this means that we experience a beautiful closeness and a warmhearted connection. In others, we may feel more tension and stress with others than usual.

This is not only true for our family relationships but for all our social interactions. We never know what sticks in people’s mind and what in the long run they associate with us.

I remember a music teacher I had when I was a child. She ate bananas during the lessons with me. Here is the problem: I bananas. I once had to throw up after eating too much of them in kindergarten.>>

We humans feel excited when we find what we were looking for. We are interested and likely engaged in the conversation when we ponder something and suddenly hear others talking about it.
This excitement makes us feel alive and in contact with the world and with others.
How happy we feel relates strangely to our searches and findings in life.>>

Sometimes it is not the pretty stuff that touches us.
We all love perfect music, we adore harmony and emotional expression, happiness, ease and lightheartedness.
But most times these can only be enjoyed because we all know the expression of passion and suffering, dissonance and tragic as well. The contrast gives the deepness.

As humans we like to be happy and lighthearted as well. And we feel tempted to appeal as perfect humans to others. We want to show the pretty stuff. We like to be examples of good humans who have figured everything out.>>

There is this odd difference.
Someone says something nice and we light up. We like how it feels to be around a appreciating person. We like praise, laughter and a smile.
We feel connected to people who are patient, light hearted and easy going.

When someone treats us well, we like that the other person might see something positive, something worthy in us. We might even think we deserve it to be treated that way. It feels natural to us.>>

In real life, we tend to think in economics. We think of saving: saving money, saving time, saving effort. We want to invest where something flows back to us.

I can see that this way of thinking makes sense in many areas.
Where resources are limited saving makes sense. We show that we are responsible human beings when we try to save electricity, don’t waste plastic and when we fix a broken tap.

Human nature prefers short term saving over long term saving. This muddles up everything, because short term saving often means wasting long term.>>

Did you notice that in any field, no matter if you look in a company, in a sports group or in a large family there is gossip.
What is it about people that makes them want to gossip?

Even though in every walk of life there is gossip, not everybody gossips.
Many people do behind the back talking as a habit. But there are also people who just don’t engage in talking smack about absent people.

I recently read an article about the behaviour of lobsters (why are you laughing!?). And in fact the article pointed out that lobsters and humans show startling similarities.>>