There Is a Light On

Dear friend,

I don't know your name, and maybe that's part of the charm.

Names are useful for introducing ourselves, but they rarely tell us the important things. I'd rather know what you do when it starts raining unexpectedly. Whether you stop to watch birds in parking lots. Whether you read the last page of a novel slowly because you aren't ready to say goodbye.

I wonder who will find these letters.

Maybe you stumbled across them while looking for something else. Maybe someone quietly pointed you here. Or maybe you've simply grown tired of places that always seem to demand more of you—more certainty, more opinions, more noise.

If so, I'm glad you found your way here.

I write most mornings from a chair beside the study window. The light changes every hour, and somehow it always makes me believe I'll notice something I hadn't seen before. Sometimes it's only the way the wind moves through the maple tree outside. Sometimes it's the woman across the street carrying groceries in one arm while trying to keep her flowers from tipping over in the other.

The world is full of tiny moments that disappear before anyone thinks to write them down.

I suppose that's what these letters are.

A place for all the ordinary things that deserve to be remembered.

Yesterday I watched an elderly man stop his truck because a family of ducks had decided the crosswalk belonged to them. For nearly a minute, no one honked. Nobody rushed them along. Everyone simply waited.

The ducks never knew that a dozen strangers had rearranged their afternoon without complaint.

I keep thinking about that.

How often kindness happens without the person receiving it ever realizing. Maybe someone smiled at you when you looked exhausted. Maybe the cashier noticed your hands were full and packed your groceries a little more carefully.

Maybe someone chose patience over irritation, and you'll never know they made that choice.

We live inside so many quiet kindnesses; they just don't make very good headlines.

I don't have profound wisdom to offer you here. Most days I'm simply paying attention. To the way bookstores smell after it rains. To the comfort of wearing the same sweater every autumn. To the strange peace of grocery shopping twenty minutes before closing. To the way tea somehow tastes better when you've forgotten about it for a few minutes.

I've started believing that a good life isn't built from extraordinary moments nearly as often as it's built from noticing ordinary ones.

Perhaps that's why I keep writing.

Not because I think I have something important to say. Because I'm afraid these little moments might disappear if no one notices them.

If you come back, I hope these letters begin to feel familiar, like the café where they remember your order. Like the quilt that's been folded over the same chair for years. Like a porch light that's always left on, just in case someone is still making their way home.

The world is constantly introducing us to something new. But the things I've loved most have never been new. They've simply stayed.

Maybe these letters can become that.

A quiet place you visit after a difficult Tuesday. Or on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Or on those evenings when you can't quite explain why your heart feels heavier than usual.

I'll probably be here.

The kettle will almost certainly be singing in the kitchen. The chair by the window will still catch the afternoon light.

And if you've read this far, then perhaps we've already become the sort of friends who don't mind sitting together in comfortable silence.

I think that's a lovely place to begin.

Until next time,

— Jericho