Ingredients
A good night’s sleep
Solitude
Contemplation
Note: One can’t plan this day ahead of time because it can only begin after a good night’s sleep. This is the first required ingredient. The others are solitude and contemplation, both to taste. Optional ingredients are up to the cook’s imagination – mine include a mocha, forest bathing, and a good book – but vital to the recipe is a balance between work and rest, indoors and outdoors. Finessing this balance is different each time; you can’t rely on what worked before.
Directions
Rise at dawn — or stay in bed if blessed with euphoric sleep or if you are having one of those drowsy delirious dreams that will make you smile all day. Be gentle with yourself at this threshold, offering a light caress to the nighttime you are departing and an open palm to the invitation of the day. I aspire to slip from sleep as easily and reverently as I dip my fingertips into holy water. There is a small opening now which, David Whyte warns, “closes the moment you begin your plans.” Do not make plans. Only assess whether you have the required ingredients of solitude and a good night’s sleep.
Now comes a tricky bit. Without scalding the morning or burning your reverie, peek at your calendar, the one in your head or on your phone. You are not planning now, just taking the quickest of looks to see if you have any obligations today. A wide-open day free of appointments is best, but that is an optional ingredient as it is rarely ready at hand in the pantry. Besides, a commitment can add that je ne sai quois that will be the perfect unexpected spice for your day, the crack in the bowl which the day itself will repair.
The Kingdom of Enough 