All the gurus are always shouting at me about how to start the day. Well, they are not literally shouting, but sometimes the YouTube elves play a little joke on me and suggest those Highly Evolved Humans who get up at 4am - I am not exaggerating for comic effect - and do yoga and bench pressing and that word I can’t actually write (journalling) and mediation and spiritual work, before making themselves a spirulina and wheatgrass smoothie and going out to Make The World A Better Place. And that can feel like shouting.
Meanwhile, I’m lying in bed laughing at the dogs and looking at pictures of baby otters on Facebook. (My perfection demons are wigging out at this stage.)
But today I did think about making the early morning into something wonderful. I sent a message to my oldest friend, asking if she was up, and she was out walking her own dogs, and we had one of the all-time great conversations about life and complicated people and letting go of resentment and stepping into love. Yes, my darlings, we went Full Hippy. It was heaven.
I remembered a delightful dream about another of the old friends and we went to the theatre together and it was the most elegant place where you could eat a grand dinner whilst you watched the show and he told me he’d escaped from America during the McCarthy era because he was on the blacklist. (This particular friend was born years after those witch-hunts, so I don’t know what that was about. But in the dream I looked at him in awe and wonder, because he was fighting the good fight.)
I went to say goodbye to the middle great-niece, who is off to the south, so there was smiling and hugging, and then I wandered into the field to say good morning to the mares. I gave them both special massages and then made some videos of the sunshine and the beauty for the groups I run, so that could count as work, even though I was really just standing in the brightness, musing. (It still counts.)
And then I came in and went to my various jobs with pleasure.
I’d love to tell you that I wander about every morning in a haze of love and gratitude, but that’s not quite true. Quite often, the engine is revving before I even open my eyes, and the demons are lashing, and The To Do list is cracking its whip, and I feel as if there is never enough time and I must hurry, hurry, hurry.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be bench-pressing and downward-dog-facing and meditating before dawn. We all have our limits, and I know mine. But it did make me think that consciously starting the day with things that feed the heart and mind and soul might not be a bad idea. And I don’t care how goofy they are. Laughing my head off with an old friend, trying to decipher the meaning of life (because why not?) and dreaming in the field with the Zen mares might cause some of the Organised People, of whom I am still slightly in awe, raise their eyebrows. But it works for me. I’m in the parasympathetic nervous system, I’ve got serotonin instead of cortisol, I’m breathing properly so that my body is getting the oxygen it needs. All of which means that I have full access to my prefrontal cortex and my creative mind, so the considerable amount of writing I need to do every day can get done without me having my shoulders around my ears.
We’ll all have our little goofs and quirks. I’m sure the YouTube gurus might be brilliantly galvanising for some people. But for other people, the day might start with a Bach suite or a line of Mary Oliver or a nostalgic blast of Leonard Cohen. It might set off on a roar with dog adoration or disco dancing or writing a perfect gratitude storm.
I come back, over and over, to what works for you. What’s important is what you love and what you want and what you need, and all those loves and wants and needs will be different. I actually appreciate a lot of the gurus, although sometimes my Mabel, who is my lesser self, likes to get scratchy about them. I used to be intimidated by them, because they seemed to have all the keys to the kingdom. (And I didn’t, obviously.) But now I’m happy to take the stuff that speaks to me, and gently leave the rest, without rancour.