In 2022 my wife was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. It left our family in tatters. For me, it took away much of what I thought I knew about how to live.

After four years of social isolation (my wife's form of dementia makes ordinary social life very hard), I am tentatively re-emerging, and feeling a change in perspective.

It has something to do with attention: the kind Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch wrote about, which is less an effort than a way of waiting. Murdoch called it 'a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality.' I think of it as dwelling in something.

In my case, that something is caring for others and for myself, tending my vegetable garden, taking photographs, walking in the Welsh hills, letting things go at their own pace.

I'm not here to tell anyone how to live. I write down what I notice, and leave it there.