Dear LPG, 

I recently found myself having one of those casual chats over a cup of tea with a friend that morphed into a more profound and meaningful conversation that I thought was worth putting on paper…

I wonder how many people have this recurring thought every morning once they have opened their eyes and worked out when and where they are.

I think that getting your bearings each morning is likely to be the first job your mind needs to focus on. If you are a dreamer (I hope they are good ones), but even if you are not, there is that moment when your eyelids open, and you return to whatever you expect the realities of your day to bring. 

The workers of the world are either working out if it is a commute day or if they can turn over and have another 40 winks, while we retired people can skip the urgency of that consideration. I now live alone, so the only thing I have to think about in the first instance is me and my plans. I wonder if, for you, those few minutes seem to last a little longer these days. I am getting slower when responding to the results of those first eye-opening moments. 

I hope everyone finds themselves self-centred for just a short while, whatever time the first thing in their morning is. There must be a moment or two when you put your day into perspective before the perspective widens to include your family and friends.

Each person’s life has to be about them before they shrink into the reality that they live in a much bigger world than that. Let’s face it, and this thought matters if you live alone or wake up in a home full of family; if you don’t have that initial morning minute where you focus on who you are and what you care about first thing, how can you refocus on the rest of your world?

I am no scientist, but this process has to happen for each one of us on a daily base, no matter how quickly it is worked through. I have concluded that young children see themselves as the centre of their universe. As we grow and learn the basics of astronomy, the process has a habit of reminding us of just how small a cog each of us represents in the wheel of life around us.

Every day we whiz around the world as it rotates, and it is relatively small as it revolves around the sun, which is one of the many stars we can see if we open those eyes and look up early enough on a clear day, as they continue to do all that twinkling. 

Who knows what is beyond all that?

After all that thinking, perhaps it is time to come back down to earth and appreciate all the other people who make our worlds seem a little bigger… 

CM, Grove Park