The Symphony Before the World Wakes

Before the world begins asking anything of us, there is a quiet kind of magic.

This morning, my dog was still asleep on the bed while I slipped into the hot tub before turning on the jets. I sat in the stillness and listened.

As I’ve gotten older, bird sounds have become something entirely different. What I once noticed as chirps here and there, now feels like a symphony. This morning, I could hear turkeys gobbling somewhere in the distance, while three owls called back and forth from separate trees. Last year there were only two. Somehow, a third has joined the chorus, and their conversations have become part of my morning ritual.

I don’t know how other people’s minds work, but mine immediately begins creating poetry. Rhythms of words arrive uninvited. Thoughts become sentences. Sentences become stories. And almost always, gratitude is the first thing that appears.

Gratitude has become a bit of a buzzword these days, but it is something I’ve practiced long before it became popular. And what I’ve learned is that gratitude doesn’t erase the harder emotions. It simply gives them company.

For years, I thought we could only experience one emotion at a time. I don’t believe that anymore.

I can hold sadness and joy in the same moment. I can miss the people I’ve loved and lost while feeling grateful for the ways they shaped my life. I can carry disappointment in one hand and hope in the other.I can feel grief and appreciation, longing and contentment, all at once.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts that comes with age—the realization that life is rarely either/or. More often, it’s both/and.

Every person who crosses our path leaves something behind. A lesson. A memory. A scar. A laugh. A new way of seeing the world. As Madea famously says, people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Whatever their role, they help shape who we become.

So this morning, as the owls called to one another and the birds welcomed a new day, I found myself grateful for all of it—the quiet, the people I’ve loved, the people I’ve lost, the words that keep showing up, and another chance to begin again.

The older I get, the more I realize that healing isn’t always found in grand gestures. Sometimes it’s found in the hour before everyone else wakes up, when the world is quiet enough to hear your own heart.

Cheri

#SundayMusings #PenAndPath #Gratitude #WritingLife #JoyAndGrief #MorningRituals