"We do things all the time — we do the dishes, do the laundry, do the shopping. We go to work and dig or type or lift or speak. But few of us practice. The key difference between doing and practicing is this: When you practice an action, you aren't merely repeating by rote but rather are striving to improve or to refine whatever you are doing — whether it's signing your name, opening a door, carrying groceries, merging with traffic, or folding laundry.
"We're familiar with practicing a sport or a dance or a game or a musical instrument. Naturally, in these formal training activities, we understand that we want to improve our stroke or leap or swing or strum. We treat these activities as somehow special and separate from the practice of everyday life, as if they were more deserving of our full attention. Which is why Socrates once said to me, 'The difference between us, Dan, is that you practice gymnastics; I practice everything.'
"Think of it! What would it be like to practice every moment and everything we do? To attend to how we lift a forkful of food to our mouths, and breathe, and chew — to attend to the words we speak and how we speak them. I grant you, in the hands of some of our more obsessive or neurotic friends, this idea of practicing everything might take the shape of a compulsive, never-ending self-improvement program. But that isn't at all the point.
"The practice I'm recommending creates an art of living. Your life becomes an art form. Your performance is unique — unlike any other — because no one else can live your life as you can. When you practice all that you do, your attention naturally returns to each arising moment. You step into the flow. You enter the zone. You become a cloud drifting through the skies, neither racing ahead of the wind nor dragging behind, but moving naturally, once again in harmony with what the Chinese sages called the Tao.
"This is my practice. I remain something of a beginner, but a devoted one. I practice with the faith in this principle — that we improve over time. The first step is to form the sincere intention to respect each passing moment and treat each action as you would a performance before thousands. How you do anything is how you do everything, which is why the Zen masters say, 'If you can serve tea properly, you can do anything.' In mastering anything, you master yourself. So ask yourself, in random moments: Am I breathing? Am I relaxed? Am I moving with grace?"
