This talk begins with a reflection on identity and the strangeness of being human in this particular incarnation. We investigate the different aspects of mindfulness, differentiating between mindfulness of attention and mindfulness of the vast mystery of life. We live in a paradox where mindfulness teaches us to care in the human world, but also not to hold on too tightly. We are separate and individual in certain ways, and in other ways that separateness is a fiction. And who we are is related to a whole so much bigger than that small, separate sense of self. We need to marry mindfulness and kindness, because only then can we really open to the mystery of our life.