Eager Unto Dawn

I despise the mornings. Yet, each day that I happen to wake up early in the morning, I feel accomplished. The day is long, and I always feel as though I had the proper time to enjoy it. I can make tea or coffee, go to the deli for breakfast, or write some of my thoughts and reflections without worrying for lack of time. If I don't get up, or more likely hit snooze one too many times, it flies right by straight into the next work week. So why is it I hate the morning if it is usually such a positive experience? Well, for the first eighteen years of my life, I associated getting up early with going straight to school and into class. And even though I excelled in it, I loathed going to school. I was quite literally Pavloving myself into hating the mornings. I woke up, sat my ass on the old gas heater if it was cold, and just sat there in anguish until it was time to roll off to school. The negative emotions brewed into a hatred so putrid that I became a full-fledged cynic by the time I was in sixth grade.

So when did it all change? Well... it didn't.

After I got out of school, I found myself with a job in California that allowed me all the freedom of an adult with little of the responsibility. My housing was provided, my meals cooked for me, and there was a pre-established community for me to fit right into. It was a bit of a fever dream if I am being honest, and I will discuss it in detail some other time. More to the point, I had every reason now to enjoy getting up early in the mornings. I woke up every day in the beautiful mountains, the sun creeping through my curtains like a goddamned fairy tale. Coffee and breakfast were practically made for me by the local camp chefs. If only I took my two-minute walk through the dewy mountain grass to get it. And I had a perfect place to work in our shared solarium space, where people walked through and shared their social graces. There wasn't much not to love. Lo, the mornings remained a struggle. I knew I should get up earlier, and I knew I would like myself more if I did. I went to bed each day with the optimism of setting an early alarm and getting up early. So why didn't I?

If you're like me, the answer is much deeper than we might care to admit.

If I got up in the morning, I had to face myself. I would have nothing but time on my plate to take care of all the things that were wrong in my life. No excuses to relax from the exhaustion of a hard day's work. No friends around to keep me socializing. No duties to perform that needed immediate attention. Just me, myself, and that crisp early air. I am reminded of Nietzsche's abyss, though is was not some abstract void of all human potential, good and evil, only my own. If I chose not to be productive, to organize my life and make something great of it, it was all on me.

The sun's rising soon became internalized as a metaphor for all the possibility a day holds within it. By keeping reality loose in the realm of possibility, I would never have to bear discovering that I might not be capable of fulfilling it. Mornings are the cleanest mirrors, and I did not dare to look myself in the eye. I refused to discover if I was capable for the risk of discovering that I wasn't. A rather paradoxical apprehension, isn't it? On top of that, my entire life up to that point had been nothing but a series of achievements set about by others for me to conquer. I never relied on anything but the wind to guide me. In a way, I developed my identity around that. Successful, fun, and smart all without a single effort. If I didn't try, and still managed to appear like everything was in control and going my way, then I became the embodiment of the perfect personas we so often project ourselves to be, especially on the likes of social media. I wasn't any more than I appeared to be at first glance. I was my best foot forward. But in truth, that's all anyone would ever see, and I could never really get close to anyone. I was but the great anticipation of a man who only ever might change the world, something great behind a door I was too afraid to open.

So, mornings were tough.

But I don't write this seeking pity. Quite the opposite. Firstly, I personally want to know if there are others like this out there. Perhaps you've hated mornings too, in fact, I know many of you have, but maybe we share this secret reason why. Secondly, I want you to now see morning as I do: a challenge unto yourself. Each tough morning is tough for a reason; it is your obligation to determine why. If something like lack of sleep is the only reason, great. Get more sleep; case closed. (ps, it's never that easy.) But if you are like me, then there is something deeper, and that pressure you feel to delay, delay, delay, only to regret, is a sign of inner turmoil. It is a problem of the spirit, and such matters are not often solved quickly. Do not delay.

Wake up with nothing on your plate and etch upon it your plans to conquer the world. Only your greatest-most self can do that, so if you aren't them, start there. Imagine that gap between all you are now and all you could be. Is who all you could be who you want to become? Is there a difference? What do you want for yourself that isn't given to you? What does this version of you do in the mornings? What are they working toward? What's their life's ambition? What do they eat, and how do they procure it? When do they sleep, and why those chosen hours? Who are their friends, and how do they make them? How do they interact with strangers? How tastefully do they indulge in life's pleasures? When you have answers to these questions and more, and this person is fully fledged, steal it all. Take their goals and dreams and make them your own. Step into the mirror and embody the greater self. If you've answered honestly to yourself, then this is what the very beginning of taking responsibility for your life looks like. Now it's time to figure out what it feels like.

Shed your skin and step eager unto dawn.

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