Permission to do the one-minute version

Thursday · The Small Thing

One minute at the window

Yesterday was a thousand words about light. This is the version that fits in a morning.

The whole of it reduces to standing somewhere brighter than the room, early in the day, for roughly as long as it takes a kettle to boil.

It treats nothing and it replaces nothing, but it is one minute of the signal your body clock is built on, delivered at the hour it reads most closely.

Today’s Practice

Before the phone, before the news, and before anything that requires a decision from you.

•	Go to the window. The nearest one, with the curtains pulled fully back rather than half.
•	Open it if you can. Glass filters a surprising amount. If it will not open, stand as close as you can get.
•	Look out, not down. Let your eyes rest on the sky itself rather than on the street or the floor.
•	Stay a minute. Count it or do not bother, and then go and put the kettle on.

On a difficult morning, ask someone to open the curtains and look from the bed, because the light arrives either way.

The light does not need you to be ready for it. It only needs the curtains open.

P.S. Tomorrow, a permission slip for December. Making it smaller now, in October, rather than in a panic somewhere around the third week.

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