Before You Give Yourself to the World, Give Yourself the First Hour

How do you make time for self-care?

HÁVAMÁL Stanza 59: Start early

“Those who are inspired to achieve great things must wake early to cultivate the consciousness and conscience they need to succeed. Those who habitually sleep late risk spending much of life reacting mechanically to circumstances and impulses rather than making conscious choices.”

For me, self-care begins by protecting the first hour of the day for myself.

There is something precious about those first moments when consciousness begins to stir after a night’s rest. Before the demands of the world arrive, there is a brief space in which I can consciously choose who I want to become and how I want to meet the day.

I go directly from waking into my morning ritual. It is a time to connect with my body, nurture contemplation, and embody the mythology and cosmology through which I make meaning of my life.

More importantly, I simply show up.

I show up every morning to be present for myself. I protect this sacred time irrespective of the weather, my mood, or how I happen to feel. It is a contract I have made with myself. By honouring that commitment consistently, the vow compounds over time into something deeper: a way of becoming.

What you actually do during that hour matters less than the act of showing up. Your practice may be meditation, prayer, exercise, journalling, walking, stretching, reading, contemplation, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of coffee. The practice is personal. The commitment is what matters.

For me, those early hours—sometimes still in darkness, sometimes as the sun begins to rise—are where I prepare to meet the world. Through posture, breath, meditation and visualisation, I restore my energy and prepare myself for the demands of work, family and everyday life.

I return to patience.

I return to equanimity.

I return to gratitude.

And from there, I am better able to step into conscious service of others.

This has changed how I understand self-care. Protecting time for myself is not withdrawing from life or placing myself before everyone else. Quite the opposite. The hour I reserve for myself becomes a shield around the quality of the hours I subsequently give to others.

By first becoming present to myself, I become more capable of being genuinely present to my family, friends and colleagues.

So, how do I make time for self-care?

I don’t try to find it somewhere in an already crowded day.

I claim the first hour.

I show up.

Every day.

And over time, that simple act of keeping a promise to myself becomes part of who I am.

Return to Chivalry

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

Youth is wealth beyond measure—the gift of time in which to be and become.

Do not squander it by blaming others, wallowing in self-pity or surrendering yourself to constant criticism. Lift your head and live. Make mistakes, learn, choose again and keep moving. Feel the texture of life while time is still generous.

After much contemplation, I gathered my own advice to the younger generation in my book, The Letters of the AR-MAN Knight: eighteen letters from the mature Knight to the younger Knight, each inspired by one statement of the Knight’s Creed.

These are not mere affirmations. They form a code by which to live—a path rooted in wisdom, courage, justice and temperance.

Read the Knight’s Creed slowly. Ponder it deeply. Do not merely agree with its words; test them against your own life.

🕯️ The Knight’s Creed of the 18 Sacred Runes 🕯️

ᚠ. I am the bearer of the Sacred Flame; I kindle life through noble intent.
ᚢ. I descend into shadow and rise anew; the strength of the earth lives in me.
ᚦ. I stand at the threshold; no falsehood passes the watch of my soul.
ᚮ. I speak as one anointed by Light; my words are vows woven with reverence.
ᚱ. I walk the line of Law and Star; in rhythm and ritual, I fulfil my vow.
ᚴ. I forge myself in action; my lance is will in motion.
ᚼ. I embrace the breaking as the shaping; in the storm, I find the form eternal.
ᚾ. I bow to the chalice of fate; in service to what must be, I am made whole.
ᛁ. I become still as the sword on the altar; in silence, I remember my Name.
ᛆ. I rise with the light of dawn; in my radiance, justice finds form.
ᛋ. I shine with earned glory; the Light within is my eternal standard.
ᛏ. I give myself for the greater design; my sacrifice is a seed of eternity.
ᛒ. I bring forth the hidden gold; in me, Spirit finds a body.
ᛚ. I flow with the Breath Divine; every trial is an initiation into deeper grace.
ᛉ. I am the temple of abundance for all; through me, humanity remembers itself.
ᛣ. I bow to the inner death; from the ashes of the self, the Knight is born anew.
ᛅ. I unite blade and chalice; in honour and love, I become more together than I am alone.
ᚷ. I give all into the act divine; in sacred gift and gesture, I become the Grail.

Youth will pass, as all seasons must. But if you live deliberately, it will not be lost. It will become the foundation from which wisdom rises.

© Jurgens Pieterse. All rights reserved. 2025

Slay the traffic demon!

What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?

Cape Town stands among the world’s finest tourist destinations. Resting at the foot of Table Mountain—one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature—and offering an extraordinary variety of attractions, it is undoubtedly a city worth visiting. Irrespective of where you live, Cape Town will seduce you with its beauty.

But this metropolitan city, with its rich and diverse population, has an Achilles heel.

Traffic.

Like an ugly beast, the traffic brings highways designed for speeds of 120 kilometres per hour to a grinding halt. If there is an accident, you are stuck. The estimated arrival time on your GPS slowly changes from a few minutes late to the point where you begin wondering whether you will arrive at all.

The problem is partly geographical. The city lies within a V-shaped landmass, with a massive mountain occupying the centre of that V. There are only a few major roads leading in and out. Cape Town is more than 300 years old and was never designed to carry modern traffic volumes.

So, if you want to improve the city, improve its transport infrastructure.

Build a ring road above the existing buildings and roads, allowing traffic to flow more freely around the city. Construct a major bridge or tunnel connecting the Foreshore and Blouberg. Create another tunnel entering the city through the mountain. Two new routes in and out, supported by a ring road to distribute the traffic—and Cape Town could finally have infrastructure worthy of its fame as one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations.

Proposed infrastructure enhancement for the Mothers city

Want to host the world’s biggest sporting events? The new Cape Town would be ready. Want to stage an international conference? The CTICC would be the place. Visitors could arrive on an international flight and, within moments, enter a city offering easy access to seascapes, mountains, deserts and forests.

How, then, should Cape Town be improved?

Slay the traffic demon—and set the city free!

Note: no actual demons were hurt during the writing of this article.

Finding peace in my garden

This morning, I open the blind of my sitting-room window to let the soft light in. Outside, the world carries the freshness of rain, and the clouds soften the morning light. The greens of the garden dance before my eyes. A bird hops through the grass.

There is nothing spectacular about my garden, yet it is a place where I can simply be.

Often at night, standing in the garden, I feel connected—as if I can breathe with the trees. Mostly evergreen and local, the foliage surrounds me. A tree or two stands strong, reaching into the sky. There is the bush that grows with such vigour that it must continually be kept at bay; the spekboom, known for returning oxygen to the air; and the flowers that bloom to invite the little honey-sucker birds to visit.

To an outsider, my garden might never win a show prize. For me, however, it is a place where I can breathe and allow meaning to arise within me.

As the sun begins to rise earlier in the spring mornings, the garden invites me to leave the room and enter it as my sacred temple—a place where I can participate in the forces of creation before the day fully awakens.

Budget travel, deeper experience

What’s your best tip for budget travel?

What’s my best tip for budget travel?

Stay at home.

Seriously. You can’t beat the price. 😄

But if you insist on actually travelling, keep it simple.

Travel light. Stay with friends when you can. Ask people who already have the means to travel for help or advice. Keep visits short. Skip the expensive tourist version of a place and mingle with the locals instead.

You don’t need to see everything, buy everything, or do everything.

Take less. Spend less. Stay briefly. Live locally. Live with awareness. Make every moment count.

Budget travel is really just minimalism with a change of scenery.