“Life on planet earth” — as a dear friend used to say while shaking her head in resigned disbelief — seems like a puzzle whose answers lie in its infinite metaphors. Immersing yourself in any one of them makes it possible to gain extraordinary skill in living. By delving into something as isolated from the mainstream of everyday life as skiing or playing a musical instrument, the things you learn about yourself, the mastery you gain over your emotions and your concentration — all of this becomes accessible to apply to the challenges of work, family and relationships.

My own practice field for living is the piano, and the power of this metaphor resurfaced as I was preparing for a No Lost Voices talk. Each group that I speak to is a little different from all the others. There are many threads to weave together and multiple objectives to be kept in mind while facilitating this conversation. As I mentally outlined all of this, my mind leapt to Claude Debussy’s Reverie which I’ve recently taken out to play — and which I invite you to listen to, sink into, for a moment now while you read.

Playing — it means to study, to channel the composer’s intentions through the keys, to experience. The pianist is charged with ensuring that none of the voices in a complex piece of music are lost, that each is presented and can be heard in its own range and volume.  Follow the separate voices in this deeply beautiful piece with your ear and you will hear always two and sometimes three threads simultaneously telling their parts of the story.  Each thread is spectacular in its simplicity; together they form an eloquent whole, a whole that is compromised unless each thread is played fully.

And so it will be when this next group of friends meets in a cozy living room, a spot of light on a dark January night, to take up the topic of No Lost Voices.  Each person in the room is a container for the multiple strands of voice that we think of as Self; the group is comprised of the threads woven from those strands.  I can hardly wait to hear the sound of this group, a blend of voices unique to this winter night.