The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
I am learning to be a morning person
PUBLISHED: July 24, 2008
My 6-year-old daughter wakes in the morning thinking good thoughts.
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Barefoot, hair mussed, and in her cotton nightgown, she patters down the stairs rubbing her eyes and announces, "Today we're going on a field trip." Or, "Tomorrow is Liza's birthday," or "Four more days until my sleepover."
Morning for my daughter brings anticipation.
She rises from bed looking eagerly forward.
In this she has recently become my role model because it has occurred to me that I tend to wake not with a happy thought but with a groan.
While my daughter swings her feet to the floor thinking, "Today we're having pizza for lunch," I bury my head back under my pillow thinking, "Today I've got to call the dealership about the transmission."
I cannot place a date to when I changed from waking with a jolt thinking, "Cool, another day," to waking with a thud thinking, "Lord, another day." But I suspect it started many years ago and crept up on me.
I bet it started in high school. Can't most negative habits be traced to our teen years? And I most definitely recall mornings when I abhorred getting up to go to school.
It is in those days of early-stage angst I first remember hating to get out of bed. Days were dreaded. Today became like yesterday and tomorrow promised to be no better.
I was a tortured teenaged soul.
Which was cool at the time, but I've decided the whole bemoaning the day thing was a terrible trend to begin. We should never willingly abandon the exuberance of youth. People able to maintain into adulthood a childlike enthusiasm for waking up are pretty fortunate, I now figure.
I used to call them "Morning People," as if they were aliens who emerged from pods at daybreak.
Morning People, I thought, were annoyingly chipper in the a.m., which we all know stands for "awful matins."
To their "Good morning!" I was inclined to harrumph, "What's so good about it?"
Morning People rise up to go for a "run" through the neighborhood while birds chirrup in the trees and dew glimmers on newly mown grass. They wave to their fellow Morning People out walking their dogs.
I used to find that kind of upbeat approach to the day downright creepy.
Cynics sneer at Morning People. We know what the real world is like and that the day is only going to bring bad news heaped upon bad news.
And every day we're proved right as word of economic troubles and war-torn times filters in.
Clearly there is no cause to be optimistic at the start of day -- any day.
But I realized something last week. It is not because of climbing gas prices or falling stocks that I greet the day with a groan. It is not the war that makes me want to pull the covers back over my head.
No, it's none of those things. It's nothing so grand. There's nothing so eloquent as an expression of a world view.
Nope. It's a simple lack of appreciation. I'm an unappreciative hound.
I have no cause not to waken in the morning and be pumped about another day. It's shameful for me to do otherwise.
Last week, I decided it was time to put an end to waking with a groan. It was time to shift my focus from the negative to the positive.
So the following morning, when I woke and thought, "Ugh, I've got so many e-mails at work to get to," I chided myself and closed my eyes.
When I reopened them, I said, "Today I'm going to see a movie."
It felt absurd, that's true, but it worked like a charm. My heart was light. I skipped downstairs like a morning person.
It was a great way to start the day.
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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