Good morning Reader—
And welcome to the 24th issue of The FAM.
This past week, I arrived in Fort Lauderdale for the ASA NETWORK convention—ready to step into boardrooms and strategy sessions. I’d be leading a strategic planning session around a single transformative idea: Winners will be those who harness change while keeping distribution deeply human. Important work, that I love. But before the whiteboards filled and the conversations began, I needed something else.
I needed the quiet. The solitude. The moment before the world wakes. So before the sun rose, while most of the city still slept, I made my way down to the beach to journal, to breathe, and to walk along the shoreline.
There is something about these early hours—the sand cool beneath your feet, the waves arriving and returning like the rhythm of your own breath—that pulls you out of the noise and back into yourself.
As I walked north along the water’s edge, the only light came from the high-rise hotels lining the beach. The ocean itself was dark, almost anonymous. The rough sand pressed into the arch of my bare feet with every step, and the rhythm of waves moving like breath—arriving, receding, arriving again. Not unlike the days we all live.
And then, out on the horizon, I saw it—the faintest, thinnest band of orange stretched impossibly wide across the water.
It was too broad for a ship, too still to be a reflection. It didn’t make sense. I took out my phone and snapped a picture, trying to understand what I was seeing. And in that moment, it hit me: This is the dawn before the dawn. The sky wasn’t bright yet, the day had not begun, but the light was already coming. The first glow of something inevitable—something huge—arriving quietly.
The light was announcing itself—without fanfare or permission. The day was coming. And this thin, orange light was just the beginning of what was to come.
I kept walking, and the band grew. A little wider with each step. A little taller. And suddenly, I felt it deep in my chest: This is what it feels like to belong to something eternal. This very moment—where the sun was beginning to make its arrival—is a part of eternity. Every moment is, right? Your sip of coffee, the sound of your partner or child brushing their teeth in the next room, the tinkling of the collar of a dog walking past on your walk. This very moment—right here, right now, as you read these words—this is a part of that eternity. You’re living in it. You are a part of something eternal.
As the sun rose, I recognized that light had been rising for billions of years. Long before you or I got here. Long after we’re gone. And yet, in this moment, it felt personal. As if the sun was rising just for me. As if it was reminding me: You are part of this. You belong to this rising. And you have a duty—not just to the work you lead, not just to the people you serve—but to your own eternal spirit to rise with the day.
This was not just a sunrise. It was an invitation. A whisper. A summons. The reminder that before there is the day’s work, before there is clarity or conviction or momentum, there is always a first glow—the quiet spark that no one else sees. And if we don’t honor that inner dawn, we miss the opportunity to live the day—and our lives—fully alive.
Solitude, Sacred Truce, and the Inner Dawn
As I kept walking that morning—watching that thin orange band widen into something undeniable—I felt something unexpected: the glow wasn’t just in the sky. It was inside me. And I don’t mean that in some poetic, Hallmark way. I mean something real was waking up in me before the day officially began.
And then I laughed to myself as I remembered something my wife, Gail, said to me a few weeks back.
We were sitting, just the two of us, and she looked over and asked, “You really like being alone, don’t you?” I laughed, probably a little too loud, because she already knew the answer. It might not have been what she wanted to hear—but it was the truth.
I do like being alone.
Not to escape. Not to hide. I’ve done that kind of hiding before, and this isn’t that. I don’t seek solitude to get away—I seek it to return. To come back to myself. To listen for the thing that actually matters beneath all the noise.
There’s a big difference between isolation and solitude. Isolation cuts you off from the world. Solitude brings you back to it. And damn, that is a beautiful thing.
Solitude is where the inner dawn happens. It’s where thought turns into clarity. Where longing turns into direction. Where that barely-there feeling of ‘there’s more’ starts to take shape. In solitude, you’re not producing, or pleasing, or performing—you’re listening. You’re remembering. You’re realigning. You’re letting the quiet do its work.
And in a world that never stops shouting… solitude is not a luxury. It’s a spiritual necessity.
The ancient Greeks really understood this. During the original Olympics, even enemies would declare a Sacred Truce. In the midst of terrible battle, bloodshed, and clashing at enemy lines… the wars would completely stop so athletes could travel safely and enter the arena as their whole selves.
While you may not have a sword to sheath, a sacred truce is a kindness and honor you can offer yourself, too. Not between nations. But between a thousand competing demands in your own mind. Between who you’ve been, and who you’re becoming.
Too often, a pattern like this one can settle in and slowly take over: Your morning alarm goes off and you rub your eyes. Just enough time to get up and out the door on time. Your mind is processing to-do lists and responsibilities before your feet even hit the ground. Maybe it’s getting your children off to school, maybe it’s the presentation you have today, or a list of appointments and errands taking over your calendar. Or, it could be deeper than that… questions linger around your worth, your skill, whether you’re giving enough, showing up in the right places, have enough time in your day, or really know who you are or why you’re juggling this all.
Too often, we barrel through the day without giving ourselves a moment to pause in solitude. To recenter ourselves to show up to our arena safely, as our whole selves.
That’s where allowing yourself a sacred truce comes in. Just a little time to pause any inner war. A ceasefire in the daily grind. A space to breathe, gather yourself, and re-enter the day grounded and awake.
Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American philosopher, naturalist, and writer, took this sacred truce to another level. He went into the woods for two years, two months, and two days “to live deliberately… and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Oh my! Suck out all the marrow of life! Go on, take that in for a moment. For me, I’ve found these moments in my walks. You don’t need to go into the woods for years… though that might be tempting to some. But creating time, space, and solitude in a way that works for you is necessary to rediscover what it means to live deliberately.
These moments of solitude are powerful. They are a refusal to drift. A refusal to sleepwalk through life. An opportunity to remember: you were born to live deeply. To live awake. To live fully alive.
Even if it’s just a few minutes a day—every time you return to that place, something in you is given the chance to strengthen. It doesn’t need to be a walk—though I highly recommend moving your body in nature. It could be a quiet meditation, your morning coffee, tea, or water peacefully enjoyed on your back porch, a moment of solitude, however it best suits you.
Joseph Campbell once said, “To have a sacred place is an absolute necessity for anybody today… a place where you can simply bring forth what you are and what you might be.”
But that place isn’t always physical. It’s not a beach. Not a forest. Not a cabin in the woods. Sometimes, it’s the quiet moment before the day begins—when something in you stirs, even before the sun shows up.
The dawn before the dawn. Not just light on the horizon. But something awakening within you.
An inner rising. A whisper that says: You are still becoming. A spark that appears before anything else does—before clarity, before change, before you even know what’s next.
That moment isn’t about location. It’s about presence. About tuning in to the flicker of your own spirit before the world asks for anything else.
The sun rises every day.
The question is: what rises in you? And are you quiet enough to feel it?
Because before the world sees the sun rise, it has already begun to rise inside you. And if you miss that inner glow? You miss the spark that makes the whole day possible.
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