I used to be really good at noticing what wasn't going well.

I could scan a moment, a relationship, an entire day, and land — almost instantly — on whatever was missing, whatever was off, whatever could've been better. I was present, alright. Just present with the wrong thing.

And here's what surprised me: doing this didn't make me feel better about anything. It made me feel worse. The more precisely I could name what wasn't working, the heavier everything got.

I think a lot of us do this in our relationships. We focus on what isn't working, quietly convinced that if the other person would just change, things would finally be okay. Look closely at our hardest conversations and you'll usually find the same shape underneath: we're asking someone else to be different. Rarely do we turn that same light on ourselves.

When I meditate with my kids, I use the image of a flashlight. We notice where we're shining it. When we get distracted, the beam drifts — and noticing that is the whole practice. Not judging the drift. Just reorienting the light.

When I first started practicing mindful communication, I learned that the actual purpose of communicating is to help ourselves and others suffer less. That reframe cracked something open. I realized my flashlight had been pointed at the wrong thing all along — and that's exactly what made it so hard for me to appreciate the people in my life, and so hard to speak to them with any real clarity or consciousness. I wasn't seeing them. I was seeing the gap between them and who I wished they were.

There's an old Buddhist story that's stayed with me ever since:

A man is walking through a field when he meets a tiger. He runs, and the tiger runs after him. He comes to a cliff, grabs the root of a wild vine, and swings himself over the edge. Above him, the tiger snarls. Below him, at the bottom of the cliff, another tiger waits. Only the vine holds him now — and two mice, one white and one black, begin gnawing at the vine.

Then he sees it: a wild strawberry, growing within reach. He picks it. He eats it. And it is so sweet.

Nothing about his situation has changed. The tigers are still there. The mice are still chewing. But for one moment, his attention rests somewhere else — on something whole, something sweet, something that doesn't need fixing.

That's the flashlight moving.

This week, as we keep practicing presence: see if you can take a moment and simply notice a good one. Not a moment to analyze or improve. Not evidence for an argument you're building. Just a moment in a relationship that's already fine as it is.

Let your light rest there for a second. Notice what it feels like when you're not looking for what's missing.

That's the practice this week. Just the noticing.