Count Two

While listening to the radio, I heard this jazz piece, composed by pianist Oliver Jones, called "Count Two." I soon decided to learn it, and I've now uploaded it to Tea with Liya. Here, you can find out about some other things you can count! I hope you like this song!


Listen to the song here
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Counting is something that we all do without knowing it.

You may be counting the years until you finally turn 10, or 13, or 20. There'll eventually come a point where you realize that time is limited.

You may be counting the months until your investment finally starts making you money. The markets aren't helping you right now, though.

You may be counting the weeks until spring arrives and temperatures finally rise above 5 degrees. That would mean a lot more time to spend outside in the warm sunshine.

You may be counting the days until this rampant coronavirus finally finds you out. (Someone had to mention it.) By the way, it would be more productive to count how many times you've washed your hands.

You may even be counting the hours you have left to live, learning the true meaning of an inevitable situation.

Now turning 13 doesn't seem so important, does it? It seems to be a common phenomenon that when we have something we want, we find something else (often less important) to complain about.

When you have a nice shirt, you want a pair of shoes to go with it.

When you have a store to buy food at, you want it to announce some more discounts.

When you have a computer, you want it to be a bit faster. In fact, this screen could use some more contrast, couldn't it?

It seems to be just as inevitable as having 3 hours left to live. But here's what you do: when one of those things comes up, ask yourself if you'd rather not have a computer at all. If you wouldn't, then you probably value what you already have.

At the end of the day, you can try to write down some things that you're glad happened to you - not just today, but also things that happened three weeks ago that you didn't understand until now.

Image by bertvthul from Pixabay

One of the things that makes our lives different from a metaphorical road is that we can see back into the past and understand it better, but there's a huge cloud of fog preventing us from seeing more than a few steps in front of us. Beyond that, we know nothing except.... what we already know.

We don't know how many hours we have left to live, but we can make the most of the ones we have right now.

We don't know where the coronavirus is going, but we can invest time into washing our hands. It shows that we value our bodies enough to take care of them.

We don't know when temperatures will rise, but we can be glad that we have coats and home heaters.

We don't know when our investments will grow, but we can remember that they can't go up unless they're down.

Come on. Get a pencil and counter those negative thoughts that always seem to come up. Just go and write down those things you're not satisfied with... and then take some time to think about how you can appreciate it. I did that for four things, so you can too.

I don't have ___, but because of ___, I can appreciate that!

That way, you won't have just counted one thing - the list of problems that you have right now. You'll have counted two.

Keep filling your teacup with music!

~Liya