What are mornings like for you? Are you an early riser or someone who sleeps til noon? Do you sleep like a log or toss and turn all night? For me, no matter what my sleep was like the night before, I’m up early and ready to go. This habit is not new - I remember getting up early Sunday mornings when I was very young and everyone in the house was still asleep. I walked out onto Meryl Lane, a dead-end street in Great Neck, and saw no one! It’s 6 am, and there I am, a 7-year-old kid waiting for everyone to wake up and play.
There I was, alone in the middle of the street. A warm June morning with haze just hanging in the air and the songs of birds that filling the air. My best friend, David Shafman, lived across the street. I wanted him to be awake so we could have a catch, we both loved baseball! I had seen a TV show where the kid threw rocks at the person’s window to wake the person up. I grabbed up a few small rocks and positioned myself under his second story house. My first rock was way too light and went nowhere. My next one was marble sized and fit in my hand perfectly. I threw it and it sailed in through the two-inch opening at the top of the window. The other throws failed to hit the window and wake David up. I went home. It turned out that I broke a lamp in David’s room, and it wasn’t noticed for days. I never told anyone that it was me!
Mornings have always been spiritual to me. In college, I would stay up after going out so that I could walk to the end of the inlet in Southampton and see the sun rise. The mornings renewed me, no matter how sad I was from the night before. I would feel hope and possibilities and the excitement to pursue them. After college I got out of the habit, and my sleep suffered. I taught tennis and the schedule was crazy! Late nights, early mornings, no real schedule, just the hustle to teach lessons anytime. My favorite lessons were the early morning lessons at people’s homes. On these mornings I gave my best lessons and had the most fun teaching.
Mornings changed after I got married. Jobs, responsibilities, and the newness of marriage made mornings not so fun. My enthusiasm was replaced with fatigue and my wife was worse, she hated early mornings! We ate different things for breakfast, we needed to be a work at different times, and we both had no real experience with building a nest. Life was both wonderful and chaotic and our sleep suffered. It wasn’t until after our first child was born that my wife and I figured out the whole marriage/parent thing. It was in the nick of time for big changes, both of us had gained weight and felt sluggish.
First thing that we changed was our diet. Then we added as much exercise as our schedule allowed. Then after 10 years of marriage, I returned to a rhythm of my youth and I started getting up early. I forgot the feeling of being alone as the world slept. The purity of the morning before the pollution of the day. A perfect start to a perfect day. The present surely is the greatest gift we are given, and the morning is the opening of that gift and a fulfillment of that promise. My sleep became deeper and more restful, and my health improved.
Five years later, we had purchased and moved into my wife’s childhood home. A short distance away was Cedar Creek Park: it had tennis courts, handball courts, and a beautiful variety of recreational areas and it was just a great park. One early morning, I found myself holding my tennis racket and felt a longing to play. I had quit tennis after hurting my shoulder and getting it repaired 8 years before. I had additional hard feelings about my father, a former tennis great and I didn’t want to play if I sucked! I found myself at the wall with a can of balls and my tennis rackets. It was a warm summer morning and I started hitting against the wall. I had a spiritual awaking there and fell in love with tennis like when I was young. My shoulder was pain free and I started hitting ground strokes that made the wall move. Both my forehand and backhand were hit extremely hard and incredibly consistent. My tennis had improved somehow, and that morning was my spiritual awaking.
I’m older now, but I still wake up around 6 am every morning. I still feel excitement for the day and have a sense of possibility. I always feel like today is going to be a great day and I must somehow be ready for it. The birds that are up seem to welcome me and they seem to know what so few of us silly humans don’t: the early bird gets the worm. For me, the early bird gets their choice of tennis court! We RISE together but use the bathroom at different times!
