Alice Herz Sommer, a Czech pianist and a music teacher, is an amazing lady with superb positive outlook in life. She was not only a survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp but also remains resolutely optimistic in her whole life. And now at 108 years old, Alice lives by herself in a tiny London flat with no assistance. She still practices piano three hours every day. Alice is truly an inspiration and the best thing I learned from her is, “Everything is a present.” Some may ask, “Even the bad experience?” I truly believe so … there is always something we can learn from our experiences regardless good or bad. As Alice put it best in the video, “I know about the bad, but I look at the good thing.”

If the above video is not working, you can take a look at the video interview of Alice Herz Sommer by Bernard Hiller:

To leave you with the last lesson from this incredible woman in the interview above, “Hatred eats the soul of the hater not the hated.”

This is a beautiful piece of music by Ryuichi Sakamoto taken from his Trio World Tour in 1996. The first time I heard this piece of instrumental piece over the radio, I was driving. I fell in love with it instantly. I managed to catch his last name ‘Sakamoto’ and tried to Google for more information last night. It wasn’t a problem at all. The Youtube video of it came up in search.

After listening to it, I knew it in my heart that I wanted to share this beautiful instrumental piece with you.

As described by other Youtube’s users: “it seems time is going by so slowly as you listen to this,” “it makes me…..so warm inside,” “it’s like the last thing anyone needs to complete their lives” etc. How do you like it?

Updated 14 July, 2009: The video below was shared by one of the commentors. The video was the vocal version of the above piece of music by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The vocal version was performed with David Sylvian. The name of it is Forbidden Colours.