Many of us walk around believing the world is full of bad people. But it isn’t. In fact, I would argue the opposite. There are far more people who stand for kindness and goodness. The problem is simply that the negative takes up more space. It is louder. It gets more attention. And over time it moves into our minds. When we are constantly exposed to negativity, we begin to focus on it. We start seeing it everywhere — in everyday life and in the people we meet. Slowly it becomes a cycle. Instead of truly meeting one another, we begin judging. Instead of openness, we react from fear. But the truth is that the number of truly malicious people is very small compared to the rest of humanity. Yet those few are incredibly good at distracting us and pulling our attention away from what truly matters — from ourselves. That is why it becomes so important to turn our attention inward. The more aware you become of your own thoughts, emotions and behaviors, the more life begins to open up. At the same time, old beliefs and narratives start to loosen their grip. And that can be frightening. We build identities around what we believe to be true. So when a belief we have carried for years begins to fall apart, something inside us reacts with fear. “Who am I without this belief?” This is the ego — identities we have built from the outside. The ego clings tightly to what feels familiar. It makes change feel dangerous, as if letting go would make us fall, even when the ground is right beneath our feet. To protect itself, the ego often pushes emotions away. We learn to see feelings as weakness, to hide them, to feel ashamed of them. But suppressed emotions don’t disappear. They turn into stress, and over time even illness. Those uncomfortable emotions can also be seen in another way. They are signals pointing us back to who we really are. Like stars in the night sky — not there to remove the darkness, but to remind us that we are not lost. Human beings are extraordinary. Nothing in the universe is capable of the same depth of kindness — and paradoxically, nothing is capable of the same darkness either.

This is part of my drum journeys, and in essence all the work I do when the drum and I collaborate intuitively.