Robin Rice

Sometimes, something so beautiful comes along. It is truth. We are ready. We must stop telling the story that we won't. We can't. They won't let us. WE WILL.

Unity get Simon's SECOND Golden Buzzer with EMPOWERING performance | Auditions | BGT 2023 "It is not our differences that divide us, it is our inability to recognise, accept, embrace and celebrate those differences.”Unity moved us so much with thi...

Our myths come in all sizes and shapes. Can you pass a spent dandelion and not want to make a wish? Our childhood games are more than that. We are wishing-types, we humans. We believe that the "dead" things can go on. We believe in spreading seeds. We believe in the magic of the wind and far-off places. Our myths give us the chance to remember what is inside of us. So often, if you think of it this way, we are beautiful within.

Have you forgotten that eons of time have passed before us? That eons of time will pass after us? How myopic we become, how small our view, how insignificant our lives - not in the grand scheme of things, which is also true, but in the actual day-to-day way we are living it. Nature does not care if you are happy today. If you smile. If you lift your eyes and point them toward what you love. Only you can do that. Or not.

The moment your thoughts turn to yourself, you are at risk of feeling alone, different, separate. The moment your thoughts turn to others, you are at risk of comparison, unworthiness. Perhaps thoughts, then, could be questioned. Perhaps we could spend some time simply being. One person in a sea of others, neither good nor bad, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Just here. With all the feelings being only feelings, all the thoughts being only thoughts, and all the ideas dropping away like the crashing waves that they are, here one moment, growing, cresting, receding, and repeating again and again and again. Welcome to the present moment. It's been waiting for you to arrive.

We have come to a place in our culture where much is not working, but also that much is unknown. This is exactly why we need creators first, and only then our technicians, as we build our future. To lay the road before we know where we want to go (just because there is such cool new road-laying technology) is madness. Take a moment, or five, or five months, before diving in. Discuss with others - both those who know more than you and those who are likely to be affected most adversely. Be willing to document what you find to hold yourself accountable. Long gone are the days when we can blindly scale the things we know to kill us. And if the old guard doesn't get it, a new guard will rise. It has always been so. It must be so now.

Life got you spinning. What rides can you get off? Media? Dramatic (and at times toxic) relationships? Sometimes life tosses us around, for sure. But sometimes, we have chosen our own seeming adventure. We can choose differently.

What if time were not time as we know it? What if it were like dividers in a sock drawer, offering only the illusion of order with the same amount of socks - divided or not? I once ate no food for 9 days and was astonished to realize that the worst of it was having no markers for meals - as if the time slot of a meal moved the day. I've also dreamed I've traveled to places that had no time. In those dreams, I've explored what it might mean to live without that beast that we volunteer to put around our wrist. When people tell me they have no time, or that we all have the same hours in the day, I wonder... What if that is not true? The point here is not actually about time, or bending time, or time as a sock drawer divider, but how wed we are to thinking of time as a truth. Makes you wonder - and that IS the point.

Once I was walking through a busy city and two men passed me. I overheard one say "It was a classic case of she didn't see the train coming." I took it as a kind of message and ever since have asked myself - what train might I not see coming? It's the tiniest little self-check and reminder that I don't know everything. It also makes me smile because that means something amazing could happen at any moment.

Perhaps the greatest of all strengths is the strength to wait and see. (Wait, but also SEE).

What feels like the scary unknown is a particular kind of illusion. You see, all futures are unknown. Each day spreads out before us like an endless sea. We only think we know what will come of it. But as we walk, we see. As we act, we choose. Each moment arises, falling in love, falling off a cliff, losing a loved one, changing a job. This is life. A series of unknown steps. For myself, I try not to project very far. I try to feel the sea at my feet and decide from there. It takes stamina to live this way, but it is as close to 'reality' as anything. It also allows for the most magnificent dreaming - a world that could be anything as soon as this next breath.

We make music with our lives. We use skill and talent, desire and the urge to gift others. We are the instrument we must care for so that we can bring ourselves to the world. We practice to do it well, then better, then so elegantly it seems life itself is playing through us. Maybe it is.

Dancing underwater? Or drowning? Perhaps there is a way to be at peace in this - even this. I often ask myself that, sometimes several times a day, on those rougher days. I imagine myself like this. Deep-sea diving. Walking not on water - but within it.

Life's a circle. A trick of the eye. We are not going anywhere (sorry to inform you). That goal of getting there only ends in the end. But we can lift ourselves up beyond the obvious choices, the maddening and impossible everything-is-the-sameness. We can see our breath. Warm under the sun. Find our wisdom. Walk only because we are walking. In this, liberation becomes our realized birthright.⁠⁠

John Muir: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Isn't that wonderful? It means, fundamentally, we are not alone or apart from each other. We are connected. Influencing. Of one humanity. Of one nature. Now, to find ways to help people know that... experience that... feel that...

Life never looks like this. It may be someone's ideal, but it is never someone's reality. We are wildly beautiful, yearning for simplicity in the chaos, but also yearning for complexity in the seemingly idle times. If you've ever got a truly blank page, enjoy it. If you don't, you're doing something wrong. Life is a big bite every day for most of us.

Some things that are old and worn are actually more valuable to me - more comfortable, more meaningful. Well-loved, I like to think. People are among the best of what is like this. I hope to elder well. I hope you elder well. I hope we work together to create a world that elders well.

Jeff Buckley: "Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is."

Many years ago, when only 18 years old, I walked the streets of Europe and wondered inside my head what was really real. Surely my reality and that of the old woman who sat on that one stoop could not have seemed more different. It was then I knew I would never know her inner reality, nor her mine. We would at best glance at each other from distant eyes and we would never meet again. Yet she taught me the greatest lesson: when it comes to the inner life of any other specific person, I simply do not know much at all.

The patterns of our lives both keep us safe and hold us in. Some days we need the security; other times the freedom. Yet even on the most difficult days, don't be afraid to open a few windows and crash a few gates. The taste of a new breeze is delicious.

Living on a farm was one of the most beautiful times of my life. My grandparents were farmers and so it felt familiar, even if I am not so good with chickens, goats, and things that grow in the ground. Watching things grow and mature, day after day, felt right and true. Grounding. Meaningful. Seasons came, and sometimes the corn was too high to see the light at the edge of town. I sat, or rather swung, on the front porch day after day, happy enough to watch the farm move with the seasons, the weather, the wind. Those days are gone for me yet live inside, never wavering. You cannot un-educate a person. You cannot unlearn what became a part of your tapestry. of life. For this, I am eternally grateful.

“Keep trying to be less wrong. That’s really the goal. With seven billion people on the planet and no two people having exactly the same perspective on everything, the chances that you're the one person who's got everything right and the rest are all idiots — mathematically you've got to see the problems with that.” - John Higgs (And from me - this sounds like a wonderful goal. Less wrong, more often, will most definitely lead us in a good direction.)

Being intentionally aware of our awareness (which is the base of consciousness) takes energy and brain space. The data of attention is costly. One of the greatest ways we can increase our capacity for awareness is to decrease the list of unnecessary things we are paying attention to. It's not fancy, complicated, or strenuous. It can feel a bit herculean at first. But in the end, it is nothing more than the simple practice of saying no to no-worthy signals.

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” - Kahlil Gibran (And then oh, how it knows itself - Robin)

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I am permitted to hold for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." --George Bernard Shaw

There is what life gives us, and what we give back. Life happens between those two.

Things happen lightning fast. Bad things. But good things, too. There is always one moment when the door opens and lets the future in.

"The world is moving fast. The fire hose of information and around the clock news has created anxiety in society. Those best able to handle the onslaught possess what author Thomas Friedman describes as “dynamic stability”. He writes, 'There is only one way to thrive now, and it’s by finding and creating your own eye. The eye of a hurricane moves, along with the storm. It draws energy from it, while creating a sanctuary of stability inside it.'” - Jeff Tidewell

When it comes to work, our relationships are where the magic can be found. So when we look at work, and in specific the future of work, it is becoming clear that we are not going to be doing much without one another because we will not want to. It makes sense as our work lives are so much a part of our lives. I for one don’t want to split myself in two—work Robin and home Robin—anymore. How about you?

In finding our voice, there’s nothing wrong with speaking loudly and with passion or soft as a whisper. Not if we are saying what is ours to say in a way that feels authentic. The beautiful baritone singing to the back of the room is a stunning show of grace. As is the tiny symbol that punctuates a piece of music like the sun coming up over a winter hillside.