August 26
In the morning, when you find it hard to get up, have this thought ready: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why should I be sullen when I am going to do what I exist for? Or was I made to keep myself warm under the blanket? — "But this is more pleasant." — So you were born for what is pleasant?
Meditations V,1
Listening mode
In the morning, when you find it hard to get up, have this thought ready: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why should I be sullen when I am going to do what I exist for? Or was I made to keep myself warm under the blanket? — "But this is more pleasant." — So you were born for what is pleasant?
Under a warm blanket the world is, at first, a collection of demands. Outside, shoes, appointments and dishes are waiting. From the bed, these things have little to recommend them.
Then even the first small task can look different once you are doing it. Slicing bread, you smell the crust. The sticking window finally gives, and cool air comes in. What a moment ago lay before you as a duty suddenly has sounds, resistances and a taste. Your day becomes clearer.
This isn't meant as proof that you should always be doing more; exhaustion is real too. But on an ordinary, merely reluctant morning you can discover that you are judging the day before you have met it. The idea of getting up is sometimes bleaker than the encounter with the kitchen then turns out to be.
