The Shorter list

On hard times, real friends and a golden sunrise.

Hard times. We all have them. The shape is different for everyone, and so is the size. What feels like a crisis to one person is barely a bump in the road for someone else.

But there’s one thing they all have in common : what they do to your friendships.

Or more precisely : what your friends do with you.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you only really know who your friends are when things go wrong. Not when you’re celebrating, not when the champagne is flowing and the music is loud and everyone’s having the time of their lives. No. You find out when you’re sick. When you lose your job. When your relationship falls apart. When the thing you were most afraid of actually happens.

That’s when the list gets shorter.

Because there’s a big difference between people who show up for the party and people who show up for you. Between “how are you?” and “how are you, really?”. One is small talk. The other is love. And honestly? The second kind is rare. Rarer than it should be.

Not that I’m in the middle of anything dramatic right now. I’m good. Just the kind of thought that visits you quietly on an ordinary Saturday morning.

I’m just musing, as I often do. It’s basically my default mode : taking things I see, hear, or live through, and quietly chewing on them until they turn into something I understand. (Overthinking the past is one of my traits in Human Design : channel 64-47 the channel of Abstraction)

But then the morning does what mornings do best, it interrupts my thoughts with something so beautiful I forget what I was even thinking about.

It’s quiet. It’s early. It’s Saturday. Which means the roads are mine. I’m up early (as always) and driving to the office. The sun has just risen. There’s a mist hanging low over everything ; soft, slow, a little mysterious. And then the light breaks through, and suddenly the whole landscape turns gold.

Over the lake. Along the motorway heading east. Heading straight into the sun. The ugly parts of the Flanders disappear into the fog. The ordinary becomes magical. Everything glows.

And I’m driving with the roof down. Jacket on. Beanie on my head. Heating turned up full blast. It’s absolutely freezing. Gangster Blues on repeat. Loud.

And it is magnificent.

There’s something about driving into a golden sunrise with cold air on your face and music playing and your thoughts slowly unwrapping themselves — it resets everything. The heaviness lifts. The list of people who didn’t show up gets smaller in your mind. And the beauty of this exact moment, this ridiculous, perfect, freezing-cold convertible moment, takes up all the space instead.

Hard times are real. They’re valid. And they teach you things you can’t learn any other way : about who deserves a seat at your table.

But a sunrise like this?

It’s a gentle reminder that the world is still turning. That beauty shows up anyway. That some mornings, all you need is cold air, golden light, and the open road.

That, my friends, is a delight.

Even with the heating on full.

image is AI generated