Listen to Your Inner Soundtrack
The heart sings softly
The mind orchestrates the sound
The soul hears closely
An old Cherokee man tells his grandson a fight raging within him. Inside him are two wolves. One is a white wolf, and the other is a black wolf. The white wolf represents positive qualities like love, joy, and peace. The black wolf represents more negative qualities like sorrow, greed, and rage. The man’s grandson asks who will win. The Cherokee man answers, “The one you feed.”
This story of two wolves comes from Cherokee legend. Whether the story stems from indigenous tales is debatable, but the story’s meaning is clear.
Whichever you feed is the act of listening to your inner soundtrack. That is your happiness habit.
You might be thinking, isn’t this the same as saying to listen to your inner voice? Yes, I guess it does, but don’t you ever imagine your life with a soundtrack playing in the background? Whenever you’re happy, you play upbeat music. Whenever you’re depressed, you play sad music.
Listening to your soundtrack connects to the two wolves in one significant way, and that is the fact that you must strike a balance. You must listen and pay close attention when tuning into your soundtrack. If you sway toward one side too much, you ruin the music. If you feed only one wolf, the other will starve and die. Life cannot always be positive, just as it cannot always be negative. We deserve to be happy but to treasure happiness, we must experience the lows just as much as the highs.
We can only maximize our happiness by ensuring that we strike a balance.
Feed your wolves. Tune into a harmonious melody.
There can be no rainbow without rain.
