Mindful Music: A Song for Acceptance

(bright music) Headspace Studio. (gentle music) Greetings, greetings, everyone. It's Kessonga here and I'm back hosting Radio Headspace. It's a wonderful Monday, and I thought I would kick things off this week by revisiting my segment called Mindful Music. For those of you who don't know, in this segment, I give just a snippet of lyrics from a certain song. I then discuss how I interpreted the lyrics in the song to be linked to mindfulness, meditation, or really any profound aspect of life in general. Now, I want to reiterate, this is my interpretation. (chuckles) You may or may not agree with how I see things, and that's perfectly okay. And hey, worst case scenario, you may be introduced or reintroduced to a great song. Alrighty, let's get into today's lyrics. They go like this. "Yes, I ain't saying you ain't pretty. All I'm saying is I'm not ready for any person, place, or thing to try and pull the reins in on me." So on the surface, this song seems to be about someone dumping another person because they're not ready to be in a relationship. But if you dig a little deeper, you may see a bit more. What I see or hear is a person that has allowed themselves to embrace the concept of acceptance by stating "I'm not ready for any person, place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me." They have accepted that a relationship is not where they're at in the moment, and this is despite being attracted to the person because they previously state, "And I ain't saying you ain't pretty." So not being in a relationship is ultimately the best choice, no matter how difficult or hurtful it may feel. I love this song because it really highlights how we as human beings often behave in our everyday lives. We behave based on how we want or wish things to be versus how they really are. In fact, this behavior is also spoken about in the song. The line that goes, "I see no sense in this crying and grieving" is actually speaking to how the person being dumped is pleading for the relationship to continue, despite the fact that the person singing is clearly being honest about not being ready for a serious relationship. And so, yes, this song is pertaining to a romantic relationship, but I bet you can find other areas of your life where you're not fully embracing the concept of acceptance. It can be a platonic relationship, a work-life harmony, financial situations, and the list goes on and on. Sometimes it can even help to pause and ask yourself, what areas of my life do I need to feel more acceptance about? And I know this seems so simple, but just noticing the feelings that come up when we resist something can be the first step to acceptance. From there, we can acknowledge that maybe we can't change what's happening and sometimes...