As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn
Ezra Pound, ‘Alba’
For years now I have been getting up around 5 a.m. in winter (often earlier in summer). It suits me. I like the energy, the awareness before the day wakes. The quiet before dawn in winter, the shift from night to day in summer. I get things done. I write. I read. I think. I garden in soft light. It is my best time of day.
This short book will explore why.
I will make the case for being alert at first light. To wake in the quiet moments when the day inhales and the night fails. Just you and the stuff that surrounds you. To be extra alive in a way that near silence allows, sensitive to minute moments of change. To be able to gather yourself, your thoughts and feelings, whether it is to sit, to write, to walk, to read, to be inside or outside, to be sowing seed, to garden, to be saturated in experience. The gift of more time in the morning, so easily given and so easily missed. The simple opportunity to start the working day refreshed, renewed. To be whole in a way that near silence gives, to be one with the wild. To be natural in nature. To nurture yourself. The chance to be alive to your breath and distant from distraction. The space to be (by) yourself, before others wake.
It’s easy, take it, half an hour, an hour, maybe more when you want. To be comfortable with yourself in a way that being alone allows no matter how many people you share your life with. The opportunity is there every day. Just you and the morning light, like flower or fauna. To learn to allow yourself to build in awareness, even if it’s just of birdsong. To be awake in a moving meditation. Try it some time, take small steps, the morning world is waiting. You and the sky or a computer screen, the page of an unread book, the taste of tea. Bring the outside inside. The day can start when you want, uncoupled from demands and distraction. And if this doesn’t work for you alone maybe find someone who wants to share the silence.
I will talk to a neuroscientist, a fisherman, a philosopher, painters and poets. I will interview other early morning people. I will examine how changes in light throughout the day, through the year, affect different people, plants. I will report on how time influences behaviour. I will take the first bus. I will report from different latitudes, including the Arctic Circle in summer (from barely three hours of daylight to twenty-four hours of sun) and the effects it has on inhabitants and me.
I will investigate the language of light and morning, the many words from different cultures for dawn and first light and what they mean and how they change.
I will keep an early morning diary from my window. I will describe how the light lifts, the sun rises, the birds sing or not throughout the year. I will observe and report. I will listen and feel.
I will tell the morning’s story.
Seize the day. Your morning doesn’t have to be decided by what time you leave the house. The constant conventional rush: for breakfast, a bath or shower, in time for the bus or Tube or drive or walk to work, to get the kids to school. You can free the day, start in a different way, remove the race.
Build up to dawn, wake a little earlier, try half an hour. Skip Newsnight or Netflix, the phone the night before, or whatever it is you watch. They will still be there. Savour the time. Avoid doing the same you always do or the day will fill like an incoming tide. What is it you wanted to do but told yourself you don’t have the time? Paint, possibly? Draw? Read more books? Bake bread? Do a little now. It’s a start. Take baby steps.
Build on it, slowly if you need. Make it an hour earlier, build up to two, it’s honestly even better, open space enough to think and feel. Don’t rush it, take your time, you have enough.
Perhaps try to skip social or other media before you sleep and once you wake. Make your early day a holiday. It is easy, honestly.
If winter is too dark and daunting (though I think it is my favourite season), start in the spring, when the light will be there waiting, as will writing, reading, yoga, walking, sitting. Whatever it is you want.
Try having a window open, your eyes and ears, too. If it is dark use only low light. Sit near the window, let the outside in.
Free your morning and mind, later skip the electric light. You will know where you are, where to walk, what to do. You will have mapped out the space you are in. It’s simple neuroscience.
Dark to light, an eternal transition, be alive to it sometime, aware, awake.
Don’t beat yourself up if you skip it or feel the need to go back to bed. Build it in sometime. There is no right or wrong, only more opportunity. It is magical the morning. A forgiving friend. Yours, too, if you want.
Afrikaans: aanbreek
Azerbaijani: sübh
Basque: egunsentian
Bosnian: zora
Bulgarian: разсъмване
Catalan: alba
Corsican: alba
Croatian: zora
Czech: úsvit
Danish: daggry
Estonian: koit
French: aube
German: Morgendämmerung
Hawaiian: ao
Hungarian: hajnal
Icelandic: dögun
Irish: breacadh an lae
Italian: alba
Japanese: Yoake
Kurdish: bandev
Latvian: ausma
Lithuanian: aušra
Luxembourgish: Sonnenopgang
Malay: subuh
Maltese: bidunett
Maori: ata
Polish: świt
Portuguese: amanhecer
Romanian: zori
Russian: рассвет
Samoan: vaveao
Serbian: зора
Spanish: alba
Swahili: alfajiri
Swedish: gryning
Turkish: şafak
Urdu: Sahar
Welsh: