28 - Obviously

B-RAD with Brad Toews

The story by David Foster Wallace goes like this; there are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “what the hell is water?”

This simple story challenges us to ask, at the very least, what are we really swimming in? And how can we even become aware of it?

Simone Weil says,

“There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.”

Things that pierce our heart offer a window into reflection but what if we could increase the frequency of the reflective moments of our lives? Revealing things hidden in plain sight, like the very water we're swimming in.

Whatever form our active reflection takes, the function is the same, to bear witness to our life.

Every once in a while I am struck with this simple, but profound insight, “you know Brad, it doesn’t have to be like this. You do have options.”

There are many things in our life beyond our control, things we don't choose. But we do choose our responses. We have options.

How do we become aware of the options? How do we have eyes to see the obvious?

By cultivating awareness between the experiences of stimulus and response. Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, writes that we can choose which path to take:

1. Be tense and lean into the event, reacting automatically, without pause or reflection.
2. Be relaxed and lean away from the event, creating space between the event and our reaction to it.

Join me in this episode as we ask, along with David Foster Wallace's fish, "what the hell is water?" and are challenged to create a space, a pause button, a practice of reflection to help us be more aware of what is hidden in plain sight all around us.

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