Easing into the day is an art most of us don’t make the time and effort to pursue. We sleep until the last possible minute, then rush and ramble through the preparatory things we need to do to simply function – a quick shower, a quick cup of coffee, a quick wardrobe selection – and after forty plus years it all becomes a habitual rush. When we arrive at the office or the classroom or even our desks at home, it is often as a frazzled mess of nerves and anxiety. For those of us with any level of social anxiety, the nerve-fraying is often much worse.
To that end, I look back at how I’ve dealt with such morning mayhem, and it’s actually been rather simple. It’s also been something that came about naturally, in unforced and unplanned fashion, in one of those rare moments of your body and mentality forging a way that works for their needs. In this case, I made a habit of getting up much earlier than needed in order to afford a few moments of calm and relaxation before officially starting the day.
This meant that at college I would rise well before anyone else, take a shower and head to the food hall for a very early, and very peaceful breakfast, which I would take alone and in silence, reading the newspaper like we did in the old days, and gently starting the mind. In later years, nervous about new jobs and new offices, I would employ the same tactic – rising much earlier than needed then sitting at my desk and slowly allowing the senses to wake, while building whatever confidence and emotional fortitude would be needed to get me through the day. That preparatory chunk of time – where I could sit in stillness and silence – was, now that I look back upon it, its own form of mindfulness and meditation, grounding me in ways that would prove helpful when dealing with whatever madness the world had in store.
These days I do a much more formal and structured daily meditation, and I’m at the point where I don’t need as much preparation and calm to navigate the average day, but I still take a cup of matcha in the morning, pause to admire the morning be it sunny or sour, and gently ease into something as innocuous as a Tuesday morning.
