the 20 minute candle

A helping hand in the transition to more analog living.

At the beginning of this month, we bought a box of small beeswax candles. Each candle burns for about 20 minutes. They are called “meditation candles,” with the intended use to give you an external motivator to sit down and actually do the thing that you are (likely) resisting. It’s a loving, tender, and tactile way to hold yourself accountable. They can be used to help you do the “difficult” thing — exercising, working on your business, etc…

But, we are of the mind that for many of us, it’s not the hard thing that we need help accomplishing. Rather, it’s the things that are meant to be enjoyed, The fun things, the slow things, the physical things, all of what might be classified as “unproductive.” However, the faster our world turns, the slower we need to move. The more digital it becomes, the bigger the necessity for physical, tactile, and analog activities.

So, we are choosing to use our 20 minute candles to help us do the things of pleasure, of joy, and of physical creation. The knitting, sewing, reading, journaling, dancing, singing, sketching, cooking, shaping, baking, and crafting. We light a candle at dinner in the hopes that we are still eating when it burns out. We light a candle as we scribble family recipes from our grandma’s kitchen and tuck them away in their wooden recipe box. We light a candle in the morning to ensure that our cup of coffee is enjoyed, not chugged. We light a candle to continue our journey of mastering the blanket stitch (first-time embroiders here!).

All of these activities are the ones that belong to our physical lives — the real world. They feed us more than we realize. If you need help remembering, try the 20 minute candle.

Happy wintering.

Images our own, and from Pinterest.