5 A.M. Magic

Why Little Moments Matter More Than We Think

Almost every morning, long before the sun comes up, I strap on my reflective vest and walk seven minutes to the gym to lift weights before meeting my friends for a run. For years I joked that I was a “lazy runner,” the type who avoided strength training entirely.

The truth was that I wasn’t lazy at all. I ran because it soothed my anorexic mind. Anything that didn’t promise to shrink me felt irrelevant. Even though I knew intellectually that strength training mattered more as I got older, I couldn’t quite reconcile investing energy in making my body stronger while I was still working so hard to make it smaller.

That only began to change by accident. A little over a year ago I felt a dull pain in my heel. So I did what I always did when my body warned me that I was pushing her too far: I ignored it. I kept running absurd weekly mileage, including a high-impact speed workout every Monday and a twelve-mile run each weekend. Then, one weekend on a college tour with my son, I suddenly couldn’t bear weight.

It was the first time in my adult life that I couldn’t run. I was certain it was a stress fracture, which frankly wouldn’t have surprised me given how often I’ve treated my body more like a punching bag than a temple. Instead it was plantar fasciitis. It sounds benign, but for me the diagnosis felt devastating. Aside from three pregnancies, I hadn’t taken significant time away from running since I discovered it at the age of fourteen.

Like many things that feel like a door closing, the diagnosis became a door opening. With running off the table, I started going to the gym. Lifting weights was not about my appearance, and it was certainly not about shrinking myself. It was about strengthening my body and making it last as I grow older.

For the past thirteen months, I’ve gone to the gym five days a week at an absurdly early hour. Yet I’m never alone there. Every morning the same cast of characters shows up: men and women who have each found their own reason to be awake before the rest of the world.

I did the math. That comes out to roughly two hundred eighty mornings I have spent in the same gym, at the same time, with the same people. And in those two hundred eighty mornings, I’m not sure I have spoken to another person more than three times. We all show up, put in our earbuds and move through the room as if we’re alone.

Until this morning.

Today, as I began the familiar routine, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I took off my headphones, which were blasting embarrassingly upbeat 80s music. The man beside me grinned and said, “I see you here all the time and I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Chris.”

“Hi Chris,” I said. “I’m the Therapist Who Came Undone.”

I didn’t actually say that, of course. I gave him my real name. We talked for only a minute or two, but it made my day. It moved me enough that I knew I would need to write about it, to understand why a small gesture from a stranger mattered so much.

I have friends and family I love, my life is not lonely. And still, this small point of connection meant something.

When COVID hit, the power of these small interactions became startlingly clear. I had access to my family and to my closest people, at least outdoors. Still, I missed the tiny threads of connection I rarely paid much attention to. I missed the cheerful hello at the grocery store. I missed asking the postal worker how she was when I mailed a package.

I think what happened this morning tapped into that same truth. These small exchanges remind us that we live among one another. They remind us that even when life is full, we still benefit from even the smallest connection. Most of us are carrying something heavy, even when we are surrounded by people who love us. A brief moment of connection can cut through the loneliness we don’t always realize is there.

That is the power of community, and community is made up of more than the people who know us well. It includes the people we pass in the most ordinary places; the neighbor who walks her dog at the same time every day, the barista who knows your order, the person who lifts weights next to you at five in the morning. These tiny exchanges form a thread that connects us to the wider world. We may not know one another’s histories or heartbreaks, but we feel the gentle tug of that thread just the same.

It’s easy to assume the big gestures are all that matters. Life, though, is also built from the smaller ones that remind us we are part of something larger than our own daily dramas and private battles.

Maybe that's why a stranger introducing himself at five o'clock in the morning brightened my entire day. In a world that often feels hurried and disconnected, those tiny moments of connection nourish us far more than we realize.