I notice the weight of my body.
The temperature of the air against my skin.
The first sounds of morning.
Near and distant.
Light entering the room.
This life is happening through the senses.
And for a few moments.
I want to experience all of it.
Whatever this day contains.
Give me the intelligence to distinguish what matters.
From what merely demands attention.
There will be messages,
Opinions,
Interruptions,
Small urgencies dressed as important things.
Help me remember that attention is a form of life.
So did I.
Let me choose carefully.
Let me see what is beautiful,
Even when familiarity has made it easy to overlook.
The face of someone I love.
Water against my hands.
The smell of coffee or tea.
And yet almost everything we once longed for.
Eventually becomes ordinary when it arrives.
Let me recognize the extraordinary inside the familiar.
There are people I can call today whose voices are precious precisely because time is finite.
Let this knowledge deepen my appreciation.
Let it make me present.
When someone disappoints me.
Before I judge.
When I disappoint myself.
Before I decide what it means.
Let that breath be a doorway back into choice.
And when something goes beautifully,
Let me stop long enough to feel that too.
Give me courage for the conversations that are something difficult of me.
Give me restraint when my ego wants the final word.
Give me curiosity when I encounter someone whose world looks different from mine.
Let me say,
I don't know,
With the confidence of someone still willing to learn.
And let me say.
I love you.
While the moment is here.
Today,
I will meet people carrying histories I cannot see.
Someone may be frightened beneath their confidence.
Someone may be lonely beneath their competence.
Understanding everyone may be beyond me.
Let me remember that a complicated human being is always larger than a difficult moment.
Give me a generous interpretation when certainty is impossible.
Give me discernment and enough humility to remember how rarely any of us possesses the whole story.
This morning.
I choose an intention.
To be present for the actual day.
To leave people with a little more dignity than I found them.
So here I am.
This breath.
This body.
This morning.
