Instead of imposing your will on every situation...focus on including everyone else, and just that little adjustment of attitude gives you the space to understand where and who you are.
Interpretation
The quote encourages us to be more inclusive and collaborative rather than just imposing our own desires, leading to greater self-awareness.
Wynton Marsalis highlights the importance of adopting an inclusive approach in our interactions with others. Instead of merely forcing our own agendas, we should consider the perspectives of those around us. This shift in attitude not only fosters a sense of community but also allows us to gain deeper insights into our own identity and place in the world. By prioritizing understanding and connection, we create an environment conducive to personal growth and collective harmony.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing project goals.
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
My daddy thought - no, he expected - that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He was correct in his belief because he had lived in an America of continual social progress, depression followed by prosperity, segregation by integration, and so on.
Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.
When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought.
Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
Iβve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless youβre incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.
Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.
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