Peace…
Stillness and dark surround and fill the sleeping places. Bodies rouse to the suddenness of an alarm, warming internal temperature, or with brief attachment to the remaining reels of dreams that flash by and are forgotten. Wakefulness comes to the mind, whether wanted or not. The dark and quiet are soothing and call the wakeful mind back to slumber. It is a winter morning. It is early. It is still night.
And it will be night, or at least dark, for quiet some time. A natural rising temperature generated from the body’s well honed circadian rhythms is the best case scenario for waking. Feeling hot under the covers makes it easier to get out of them and step into the cool (or perhaps cold) morning dark. For many, including myself, the alarm sounds, and I’m not ready to leave the comfort, the warmth, the quiet, the time of rest and not thinking of the demands of the day, the deep peace of winter’s night.
Sleep limbo…
Rolling over and sinking further into the blankets and pillows is pure pleasure, or nearly. A tension builds. The mind sufficiently online reminds of the day ahead and the reason the alarm went off so early. A little pleasure ekes away. A kind of sleep limbo sets in: two parts “get up”, two parts “rest more”, one part lethargy “here we are again”. Too much time in sleep limbo eventually results in getting up. The mind becomes too active to return to sleep. That said, it’s possible to stay in sleep limbo long enough to burn away precious stretches of the morning or go into a poor half sleep filled with bizarre dreams. A choice must be made, face the day or let beautiful dark winter morning sleep return.
Hardly anything feels better to me than rolling over in bed on a night saturated winter morning and returning to a gentle slumber. It feels like a cozy warm protective barrier against all the discomfort of the day. It’s not that my days are particularly bad, or that they have nothing to offer that I might look forward to, but like most people who work for a living there’s a lot of getting through it. There’s more getting through it than there is wanting to do the things I must do. Yet I do the things I must do because they afford me the opportunity to do the things I want to do – like skiing. And here we’ve arrived at the enigma of mornings. On a ski morning I pop out of bed in an instant. No struggle. No sleep limbo. There is nothing I want more than to drive up the mountain in the long morning dark to greet the sunrise, strap planks on my feet, and slide down the snow. I love it! I love it more than extra sweet and cozy sleep on a cold, black wintery morning.
Simulating the experience…
In my fantasy I would have access to a public (or private) holodeck, like on Star Trek, where I could step into a simulated ski hill every morning to start my day. Maybe this would solve all of my sleep limbo problems. I would miss driving up the mountain though. As you venture out for a ski trip you journey through the whole experience of sunrise. For quite a while it’s so dark you can see nothing but the road in the headlights. The heater blasts away heating up the vehicle, and coffee facilitates alertness at this fragile wee hour. Slowly a good hour or more into the drive the shapes of trees passing on the sides of the road start to surface from the black. The sky begins to take on a very subtle greyness that grows lighter until a line of light appears beyond the distant horizon. The spectacular vista only becomes more splendid as you speed on into the mountains with light blues and pinks and golds rising and lighting up the sky. White snow patches begin to cover the now clearly visible dark green trees and muddy ground, eventually consuming all the land and vegetation in powdery white. At the top of the mountain the transformation is complete. Now the world is all winter and mountain and sky at the very beginning of the bright and beautiful morning.
Finding a drive…
Even the holodeck fantasy doesn’t quite match up to the totality of the experience of a ski day, which calls me forth with unparalleled ease from my bed and peaceful rest. I have entertained the idea off and on throughout the years of trying to find something of close to an equivalent desire as I have for skiing to motivate me out of bed in the morning. I’ve thought of training for skiing. It’s connected, maybe that would get me up. But I don’t want to train, even for skiing, I want to go skiing. I can wake up for a flight to take a trip somewhere, but I don’t like it – it’s hard – and that’s maybe the next best thing to skiing. The closest I have come to a desire to get out of bed is to experience the morning. I do love the morning, just not always as much as sleep. It’s especially difficult in the dark to use my love of the morning as a motivator because it’s a long time between 6 AM and sunrise. Nevertheless, if I get up in the dark and start my day, I have more opportunity to enjoy the light of the morning when it arrives. It is worth it to get up in the dark, but it’s so seductive to stay in bed, and, alas, I am weak.
I don’t have a definite solution to the enigma of mornings. They are both desirable for wakefulness and desirable for rest, especially in the winter. One of my hopes for my 10 Weeks of Winter project has been to adjust my circadian rhythms to create that gentle natural wake up where the body heats up and calls forth the conscious mind, which has less resistance to rising with a warm body. I’ve been using red light therapy first thing after I get up and in the evening before bed to help boost the circadian rhythm effect. I’m also trying to have consistent bed and rising times, though I have been less diligent with this than the red light therapy. The project is nearing the end of the third week, and I’m noticing my body waking me up earlier, before the alarm goes off. Now, my mind is still not totally on board, but in general the physical effects of the changes look positive. I will need to figure out how to summon some motivation, some desire for my mind to hold onto and pull me out of the lulling comfy bed and into the winter morning.
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