About
On day one you answer a question, longhand, and fold the page away without looking at it again. If nothing extraordinary happened this month, what would still make it worth remembering? Then thirty days. One small attention a day, ninety seconds each, attached to things you were doing anyway. The first sip of the first hot drink. Warm water on your hands. One peach eaten standing up over the sink. Four o'clock light. Clean sheets. Rain from a window. Somebody's hands while they are doing something ordinary. And once a week, something longer. A Chardin still life for ten minutes. Forty minutes on a bench writing down everything that happens, including when nothing does, which is Georges Perec's exercise. An Ozu film, watched for the shots with nobody in them. This is not gratitude, and the word does not appear after the fourth page. Gratitude asks you to assess your life and find it good enough. Savouring asks you to notice what something tastes like. You can savour a cup of tea in the middle of the worst year of your life. On day thirty you answer the same question again, from scratch, and only then do you get out the first page. The second answer is almost always longer. Nothing about the month was different. Thirty-eight steps. You are not going to have a better month. You are going to be present for more of the one you were having anyway.
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