When I was twenty-one, my uncle shared with me the works of Eknath Easwaran, a spiritual teacher from India.

I was particularly intrigued by the concept of one-pointed attention: the idea of doing one thing at a time as a spiritual practice. I couldn’t always follow through on it — a long drive with nothing to listen to is a long drive indeed — but there have been times in my life where I have discovered the magic of treating virtually any task as an opportunity for meditation, or at least, reflection.

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Sometimes, on a typical day when the The Little Middle School is in session, we’ll split the group: Whoever would like to go to the park can do so, and whoever wishes to stay and work can do that.

Inevitably, the park-going children are exuberantly loud when they return unless we take a moment to help them recalibrate before reentering the building. They’re still using outside voices and taking up a lot of space. The kids who stayed to work will look up in dismay and shush their noisy, boisterous counterparts. They had settled into the zone, and they find the disruption jarring.

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When I was growing up in Maine, channel 19 was the French channel, broadcasting presumably for the Québécois.

As a child, back in the 80s and 90s when there was a dearth of entertainment, I would try watching this channel now and again. Each time, I grew bored after just a few minutes. I wasn’t going to accidentally pick up French just by being in the room while a dubbed soap opera was on the TV screen. There would need to be a greater investment of time and effort.

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Watching over the shoulders of gamer friends and relatives as they choose their avatars for the journey ahead, I’ve learned about the tradeoffs involved.

You can have strength, agility, stamina, or cunning — but not all four to the same degree. Each option has its vulnerabilities and advantages. You’ve got to make decisions about what will be most useful to you, based on your own unique playing style and preferences.

Kinda like life, right? Except in life, some of us get the idea somewhere that we’re supposed to be good at everything and that there shouldn’t be any tradeoffs.

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When I was a kid, I was just in awe of professional musicians. How do you get up on stage and play song after song and not mess up?

Well, I’m still in awe of professional musicians, but now I understand something fundamental: Most of the time, whatever they’re doing up there is as easy as driving around town or carrying on a conversation.

It takes a degree of effort and concentration, but it’s within the range of routine activities. They’re not pushing themselves so hard that they’re risking a train wreck in front of hundreds or thousands of people. They’re doing something that they can already reliably do.

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