The Beautiful Potential Mornings Hold

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You blink once, then twice, then a third time for good measure. The room is dark, and the world outside is quiet. You debate momentarily; your heart and your head fighting – sneaking a glance at the alarm clock, the soft glow illuminating the dim room, you realize you’ve got enough time to fall asleep for another hour or two.

The sky outside is soaked in a navy blue film of sleep, the only light provided by the stars that litter the atmosphere. The cruel winter chill of January makes you bring your sea of blankets closer to your chest. The unique sound of silence that fills your house makes you want to bottle it up and save it for your most chaotic days.

Your eyes, clouded with sleep, weigh heavy upon your face. Something within you tells you to fight to keep them open while your body adds weight to them after every passing second, making them so heavy it is almost unbearable – in those few moments between consciousness and sleep, the world finally seems at peace.

The body next to you, barely visible in the dim morning light, stirs. They can sense your consciousness, even in their deepest sleep. You watch their chest rise and fall with each breath; their heart beating like a metronome, behaving as a timekeeper, an internal clock steadily ticking.

Suddenly you feel as if you are invading the most intimate of moments, watching someone in such a vulnerable state feels almost wrong. But you remember you are special enough to see this significant being in such a human state of existence.

We sleep to recharge, to regain balance after a long day of operating at one hundred miles per hour. Running from work, to school, to meetings, to practice, to work again, to home, to the gym, back to school gets tiring. When we finally lay down at the end of day, overwhelmed with pure exhaustion, we let down our guard. We place enough trust in the person who lies down next to us and we allow them to see us in the purest state of rest.

Although a night spent together may mean one thing, waking up in the morning together adopts an entirely new level of significance.

With sleep still in their eyes, and their body so incredibly warm from being wrapped up so tight in the sheets, seeing someone take their first couple of conscious breaths is an experience so rare it could be compared to watching lighting strike the same spot twice.

Mornings are taken for granted all too often; most of us let ourselves succumb to the pressure of our eyelids, drifting away to the safest recesses of our minds – being all too selfish, never acknowledging the body next to us.

Next time the universe nudges you awake in the early morning, embrace the cosmic sign as a reason to roll over and eliminate the distance that stands between you and your fellow being in bed. There are an infinite amount of details that characterize this unique individual next to you; these details need memorizing, they deserve to be acknowledged.

The morning holds such beautiful potential; it would be a shame to let it go to waste.