Some nights the work is just to listen. The page can wait. The mind still gathers, and even silence can be practice. And yet sometimes that silence drives the hands anyway and a few words spill out, maybe the mind’s way of making sense of the stillness itself.
There’s a version of me that I really like. He’s the kind of person I want to spend time with. When I pay attention to how I do small things, I catch glimpses of him in the automatic rhythm of tying my shoes, the way I pour coffee, how I greet the day. Each minor, everyday act says something about the person I’m still becoming.
Attention has a way of adjusting the focus until the picture sharpens just a little. If I watch my daughter walk from the car to the school door and try to stay with the moment instead of the checking the clock. If I choose a record with intention, drop the needle, and really listen without scrolling. If I take a quiet walk without headphones and just… walk, feel each step rolling forward, remembering what it means to inhabit a body, to belong to time.
I think maybe character and contentment aren’t built in the grand decisions but in the patience of noticing. The smallest acts, done with care, keep teaching me how to move through the larger ones with steadiness and presence and a little less fear.
And when I truly notice people, really see them, kindness stops feeling like effort and becomes the only response that has ever made sense: to look someone in the eye, see the child they once were, and meet them there, in that brief light of recognition before the moment passes.
There’s no real point here, no grand wisdom, nothing new. Sometimes it just feels good to write whatever floats to the surface, not polished or perfect or sharp or whatever. Just practice and flow. Creation for its own sake, perhaps. A way of closing the day with a few honest words. Or at least as close to honest as I feel comfortable getting right now.
The Truth About Tigers 