Heroes Not Zombies

How do you begin your day?
Chances are the answer to that question has changed for you over your lifetime. For the couple of decades leading up to my 60th birthday I’d get up around 6am, shave, shower and dress, have a quick coffee, then set off for the railway station to begin my daily commute to the hospital in Glasgow. Once I’d retired and emigrated to France the pattern changed a lot. No commutes any more. And no routine requirement to be a particular place by a particular time. That was four years ago, and my patterns have changed a number of times over those four years. My most recent pattern is to get up when I wake up, usually between 7 and 8am, shave, shower, dress and then spend the next hour or so language learning. I’ve been learning French since I moved here and now I can read it pretty fluently, and can manage conversations with native speakers but I’m far from as fluent as I’d like to be, so I use apps, videos, or podcasts every day, and read articles which catch my attention in the newspaper, “Le Monde”. In addition to that I regularly buy French language magazines and books so always have more to read when I want but I don’t include that in my language learning time. Because I can set off after breakfast and be in Spain for lunch I’ve had a few trips to Spain. I’d never been to Spain until I moved here and I speak absolutely no Spanish, but I like the place so much I’ve decided to learn a bit of Spanish too. So each morning in my language learning session I’m working my way through the Duolingo Spanish course.
Before I settle down to learn though, I open the shutters. We live in a traditional old Charentaise house and all the windows have wooden shutters. The rhythm of closing them all at night, and opening them up every morning pleases me.
When I open the shutters it might still be dark outside but as we move away from the Winter Solstice it gets more and more likely that the first thing I see is the dawn.
Here’s what I saw this morning.

Isn’t that beautiful?
It’s not like that every morning of course, but how it just captures my attention and entrances me when it does. It strikes me that it’s kind of life enhancing to witness, and pay attention to, the dawn.
So I was very taken with a quotation from Mary Oliver’s essay, “Wordsworth’s Mountain” which The Paris Review printed in an obituary article this week.

But dawn—dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person by his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.

I like to think that although I only knew her through her writing, and how, of course, she had absolutely no idea I existed, that I wasn’t a stranger to her. What a lovely way to put it, don’t you think? Instead of just saying she could understand, or sympathise with, or share a point of view with, someone who loves the dawn, she said they couldn’t be a stranger to her.
That reminded me about the importance of the start of every day. Not just our first activities, or even our first thoughts or words, but how we begin the day. How we make that first connection.

What kind of connection do you make at dawn?

Here’s another photo I took this morning. The dawn sky behind the winter mulberry tree. (and, yes, that white spot in the top right corner is the moon! I know…but hey, it was just my iPhone!)

By the way, do you have a favourite Mary Oliver poem?
And if you’ve never heard it before, Krista Tippett’s 2015 interview with her remains one of my favourite Onbeing podcast episodes.

Treat yourself sometime.