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Today's
Meditation:
Most of us develop patterns very early in life-- when we're
teens, one of our biggest desires is to be able to stay up
late, especially to watch some of the TV shows that are
unavailable to us when we're going to bed early.
When we finally are out on our own, we find that many of
our contemporaries are out late, trying to make the most
of their non-work time. And staying out late, of
course, means staying in bed as long as we can the next
morning to get as much sleep as we can.
Because of this, most of us miss the dawns. Most of
us end up on a schedule that really isn't natural to our
bodies' rhythms, and we tend to spend the dawn hours still
asleep or grumpy. It is a shame because those hours
are among the most peaceful and invigorating hours of the
day-- sitting quietly while the sun comes up can be an
incredibly spiritual experience, though we never will know
until we try it. Most people's experience with dawn
includes getting up "earlier than normal," which
means that they're not at all in the proper frame of mind
to actually enjoy the time.
The dawn, of course, isn't for everyone. But quiet
moments of peace should be. The dawn offers a
beautiful time of the day for us because it tends to be
quiet by nature-- the world still hasn't started its noise
and hustle and bustle that tend to draw us in, keeping us
wired and stressed. If rising early enough to
experience dawn-- truly experience the peace and solitude
that it offers-- isn't realistic for you, then it is
important that you find some time, somewhere, during which
you're able to slow down, be quiet, and be alone so that
you can start to feel your connections to the life all
around you, rather than always hurrying and worrying and
feeling cut off from the rest of the world.
After all, life really does become richer when we treasure
every moment. It's in our act of treasuring the
elements of our lives that they actually become the
treasures that they have the potential to be.
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