Early to rise: My father, and Ben Franklin, were right

My friend Julie van Amerongen, whom I met through our association with Conscious Capitalism, asked me to participate in her intriguing study of Practices. I’m glad she did, for it got me to reflect on what practices I’ve discovered over the years that help me. One of them is rising early. 

When I was a young man, my father would make fun of me sleeping in so late. In those years, the late 1970s, he worked for a real estate company that was something of a legend in its industry for its 6:00 am meetings, every day except Sunday. My father came to love those meetings. In fact, he’d get there early. I, on the other hand, was in graduate school, and in the habit of staying up late the way any red-blooded person in their 20s should. I’d try to reason with my dad. “What does it matter how late I get up—it’s the work that counts, right? If I can work well late at night, why shouldn’t I?”

He wasn’t buying it.

Then in the summer of 1981, I returned from a European vacation with the mother-of-all-jet-lags. I was out cold by 8:30 pm and wide awake at 4:00 am. Yet this affliction turned out to be an unexpected blessing. In that year, I was struggling to write my Ph.D. dissertation while working full time. Out of desperation, the idea came into my head to write for two hours before I left for work. Sure, I’d fall asleep at our friends’ parties, but it was a question of priorities. I had promised Lori that I’d finish my Ph.D. before our wedding date: June 4th, 1982. Once married, we would have new things we wanted to do,and my lonely, rather desperate dissertation writing was definitely not on either of our lists. So those quiet, peaceful hours of the early morning became precious stepping stones to the life I yearned for.

As it turns out, I still haven’t recovered from that case of jet lag. Given that it was 32 years ago, I probably never will.

Sacred space

I soon got used to having the early mornings to myself. Those hours before sunrise became a kind of sacred space to me, and I’ve used them over the years to do whatever work has been most important in my life. In the late ’80s, I used them to plan out Levenger, and once we launched, to do whatever Levenger work was most demanding, before the official business day began. I gradually shifted from writing advertising copy and business letters to writing about broader issues such as this, nowadays called a blog.

I wrote my first book, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, in the early mornings, and could not have managed it otherwise.

Over the years, I came to love the rituals—tiptoeing past our pajama-clad sleeping boys, making coffee, greeting our dog, Ladi, who was always ready to spring up whatever the hour. She and I would go outside to examine, respectively, the stars and the lawn. (Living in Florida makes it easy to venture outside regardless of the time of year.)

Toast, jam and meditation

Today, although the children are grown and our dear Ladi has passed away, I cherish the early mornings more than ever. I go outside and gaze up at the starry night, listen for the wind in the palms, the crickets’ dwindling song, the occasional cry of an owl or a heron. I’ll sometimes hear a fish belly-flopping back into the becalmed Intracoastal Waterway, which runs along our house. I let the night’s exit work its beauty on me, before I try to fashion a little beauty myself through my work.

After an hour or so, I’ll get hungry. I’ll make toast with jam or something similar and take it with me outside, reclining into an Adirondack chair to watch the morning materialize. I don’t try to think of anything. I just let my mind be quiet. It’s my form of meditation, I suppose.

As age gradually dulls my senses, I wonder what surely millions of others fortunate enough to near 60 have wondered: is it possible to hear more sweetness in a bird’s song, even though we hear less well? To witness more beauty in a sunrise, even though we see less well?

Is it possible, in essence, to gain more sense through weakened senses?

My father and now myself are members of a large congregation of morning worshippers that spans the globe. Americans grow up with Ben Franklin’s “Early to bed and early to rise…” (you can finish it if you grew up in the U.S.). I’ve heard that in Holland there is an expression that translates to “Every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two, and every hour of work before noon is worth two.” (Will our Dutch friends please fact-check this?)

The owls and the larks

Although English has over a million words, we lack the equivalent of the Spanish verb madrugar, which means to rise early. Spanish speakers deploy this verb beautifully in the expression, “El que madruga, Dios le ayuda,” which translates to, “He who rises early, God helps.” (I think you’ll agree that beats the early bird and his worm.)

And there is this simple expression I saw on a bookmark that one of my dear mentors, Ric Leichtung, kept near his desk: “Joy begins with the morning.”

Researchers are now discovering that our preference for rising early or late may well be how each of us is wired. It’s part of our chronotype, or personal internal clock. I’m aware that plenty of people find themselves most creative at night and preserve those quiet hours, when the world has retired, for their sacred time. These night owls, I imagine, reap some special satisfactions unknown to us morning larks.

But right now the sky is brightening outside the glass doors of my office and I don’t want to miss this particular sunrise. So I’m off, dear reader, to sit outside and wonder.

And how about you? Do early morning hours beckon, or late-night hours entice? I’d love to hear about your sacred time. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Comments

[Doug Manchester]

It has shifted for me. When I was single, the earlier hours were for socializing at the coffee shop around the corner (pre-Twitter and Facebook). The evenings became my most productive and creative.
Now, with a family, it has shifted to using the earlier hours of the morning as my "thinking" time. Time to be in a quiet zone; a time when the day's strategy emerges.
Evenings have now become the social hours--a flip-flop from two decades ago.

[Lynn Buchanan]

That lake in the top pic sure doesn't look to me like Florida. It is more like my neck of the woods up here in the northwest.

I used to be an early riser, but at 83 I tend to sit in my library of bookcases from Levenger and reread some of my many books.

Lynn Buchanan

[Cindy Wigglesworth]

Lovely - so well said. Yes we see more clearly as our eyes age. :)
Hope you are doing well...

[Judy Goodrich]

Growing up on a farm, there were early morning chores before the school bus arrived. My sister and I would have preferred a little more sleep to feeding livestock. I think we grumbled every day. Now my husband and have our own farm, and for many years have had a 65 mile early morning commute. The stars are still out and the air is cool when we leave for work. Even on my day off I am up before daylight, in time to enjoy the quiet of a new day.

[Lissy Davis]

My Dad always told me that one hour of sleep before midnight was worth two hours after midnight. He wasn't Dutch, but he was very wise!

[J Knox Morrison III]

Excellent piece for contemmplation, as always.

One question, though - in section on "Sacred Space," 3rd para, you don't specify where Ladi got her astronomy degree nor yours in turf management (or is the "respectively" a tad turned around?).

Have always loved to twit you, Steve -- remember "bomber jackets" pictured on WWII USAAF fighter pilots in your catalogs?
Joe Morrison

[al campoli]

Mornings are my way of focusing for the day. I get many things done in the early mornings. Watering the garden, miscellaneous chores and looking at the sunrise!! I'm a photographer so getting up early allows me to capture the beauty of the new day. It's also a time for quiet reading. No disturbances and I get a lot more reading done in the morning than at any other time of day.

[Steve Leveen]

Sweet comments and memories, my friends. Yes, Lynn, you're right. That lake is not in Florida but in Switzerland, where I took the photo during an early morning break on a bike ride. (A guy's cycling trip I do every fall, lucky me.) My best to you all--Steve.

[Carol Annino 116 Leward Dr. Miramar Beach Fl 32550]

I love the expression "Joy begins with the Morning." I have always been an early morning riser. There is something magical about the morning air; the sweet smell of the morning dew brings a new dimension to the trees and the colorful shrubbery as they seem to raise their limbs to the morning sky. The morning touches my soul, especially when I hear the birds singing; it all seems so harmonic, like the sound of a dynamic symphony. Although I am retired, I look forward to getting up and out early for daily exercise classes, which stimulate the mind and body for a productive day.

[Susan Young]

Late night leaves a longer period of time to create. In the morning, the world is getting started, and any creative endeavor is interrupted with the work of the day. At night, the demands of the day fall away, leaving long stretches of quiet time for creative thought and action. Since a creative thought is like a surge of adrenaline, I'm revitalized even after a challenging day.

[Bill Purdy]

I became enthralled with the early morning when standing watch in the US Navy as the night sky lightened and the morning's beams began slowly spreading out from the eastern horizon across the slowly rolling ocean waves. Each of those days, and continuing these many years later, unbidden words rush into my consciousness, "Behold the dawn!"