"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."- Marcus Aurelius
When I was a boy my father used to wake me up at 5:00 am and we used to take walks around the city for an hour and meet all kinds of people. While staying in the country with my grandfather he used to wake us up earlier than that, get the horses, saddle them and go to the farm proper until 7:30 am.
I started a web challenge from the website 99U through an article by Sasha Van Hoven called "Become a morning person" because through the years I learned to stay up late and get up late.
Even the phrase 'getting up late' suggests a bias against getting up past 8:am or so.
Because of the #labrat challenge I've been getting up early, close to 6:00 am plus/minus 6 minutes. Then I post my get up time under the hash tag labrat: #labrat on Twitter.com
Is so joyful to appreciate a beautiful morning break. To me it is a challenge to be a morning person of course. For so long I have relished going to bed late, there has been a silly badge of honor to say " i stayed up until 3:30 am reading, studying, coding Python/JS/CSS tutorials like Codecademy and Khan Academy, binge on Anime episodes of "Blade of the Immortal","Xholic", the great BBC dramas "Smiley's War" and "MI5", or Korean Drama like "Iris" shows to tell the truth. It's a lot of crap mixed with good crap =]
Clearly to be a 'Morning Person' is a change in life style. It means a change in priorities. It means simplifying and distilling what is important.
Staying past 1:00 am will not work as a healthy and balance lifestyle. This change of priorities appears to conflict with learning to code. Coding feels best after 11:00 pm.
Finding a harmonic flow of commitments, tasks and chores as joyful life ritual is key. To be completely present in every task without hesitations nor worries requires structure.
I lived at the Rochester Zen Center for 15 months in our Residential Training Program. Of all the 'spiritual' work I've done nothing has been more fundamental to living it than the Zen training at the RZC. It gave a level of maturity to my recovery work and gave structure to my personal walk of the Sun Dance Way.
It is difficult to practice (whatever your spiritual practice may be) without a harmonious structure. At the RZC we have a season challenge called Term Intensive, TI for short, where our Sangha (Community) participates. This #labrat challenge is also a community challenge, a globally open one. I already see slow but positive changes in my routines.
I hope that challenges like this one grow in popularity and effectiveness, the potential benefits are enormous.
How wonderful are those few minutes before the sun breaks it is truly magical time to pray or meditate. But without complicating it it is good to enjoy such a unique and revitalizing moment, and its free.
The challenge is well worth the effort and am curious as to how positively this will affect my day, every day.
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