Golden Hours
On Chemex coffee, a sleeping dog, and the hours that set everything else in motion
5:30 AM. The house is dark and still.
A little blonde, four-legged lady, Nemi is her name, is sound asleep at my feet, light snoring, one ear occasionally twitching.
I ease out of the couch carefully, she deserves the rest.
First: a full glass of water. The body has been fasting and breathing for seven hours. It deserves that before it gets coffee.
Then Nemi stirs, and sits up on the couch. Still drowsy, with what I can only describe as a small smile on her face. I walk over. We greet each other the way we always do.
I scratch her head, work through her aging body, she is 12 years and 5 months old, with slow hands, and she leans into me with the full weight of her trust.
This is the first moment of the day I feel completely present.
The Chemex coffee brewer goes on. Two pieces of dark chocolate. I stand at the window and watch the light begin to find its way through. Nature waking up on its own schedule, unhurried.
I say thank you, quietly. To whatever universal intelligence assembled all of this.
And then something happens that I still don’t have the right word for. A warmth moves through me, from top to bottom, like the gratitude found a physical form. A tingling, a fullness, soothing. Call it what you will.
Protecting The Early Hours
This is why I protect the early hours.
Not because I’m disciplined.
Not because I’m a morning person by ideology.
I’m simply someone who has experienced what a slow, quiet start does to the rest of a day and I can’t unknow it.
When you ease into your morning, cortisol, your body’s primary stress hormone rises gradually, naturally. Your nervous system has time to calibrate. By the time demands arrive, you’re already settled.
When you wake up to urgency, gulp down a cup of coffee, cortisol spikes before you’ve said a word to anyone. That physiological stress response doesn’t disappear. It follows you. It colors your decisions, your patience, your energy often during the whole day.
The quiet morning isn’t indulgent. It’s structural.
It’s the difference between beginning the day and being thrown into it.
Now It Is Your Turn - Try It Once
Find 30 quiet minutes before the world starts asking things of you.
Try it!
Not every morning.
Not perfectly.
Just enough to remember what it feels like to start on your own terms.
🙏 Have a great day.