Lao Tsu in his Tao Te Ching shares an invaluable piece of wisdom: “The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.

We need to adore difference so that we can all finally, in fact, be the same in the only sense that matters: as human beings. And what magnificence that sameness is.

So how about we walk across the road and listen? And soon ask to be listened to, too. And promise never to interrupt. Only to learn. And eventually to respect?

And then, who knows?

To love?

““What am I going to put in it, grandmother? The medals?” I wasn’t winning any money as a youth, and the medals themselves meant everything to me but they weren’t things we could sell, not that I ever would have sold them. “These medals, they symbolize your future wealth. I am telling you, Mokgadi, one day, they will turn into money that you can put it in the bank,” she said.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.

Chapter 2: Making Magic in a World that Could Use More of it

““People will forget what you do; they’ll forget what you said. But they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” This quote, often (but probably incorrectly) attributed to the great American writer Maya Angelou, may be the wisest statement about hospitality ever made.