I Rise

I have always been an early morning riser. That doesn't mean I won't go back to bed given the opportunity but at least for a while I will leave the bed and do my best to not wake anyone so I can sit alone for a bit.  I remember doing this as far back as four when I learned that as long as I didn't bother anyone I could sit quietly on the couch with the TV all to myself,  that was back when there was only one TV in the house and the "Little Rascals" still came on in the earliest of hours.  I would find my own breakfast,  usually dry cereal, and sit with a blanket and the volume turned down so I could just hear it.

These days I sit with a cup of coffee and a Kindle or phone and tap away words on a glowing screen.  Gabby my youngest is usually the first to join me but she,  like me, understands the need for personal quiet.  She settles with her own morning juice and cereal or yes, occasionally cookies, and with the exception of a few words we sit together in comfortable silence lost in our own heads for a few moments before the world wakes up and we are forced to begin the process all again.

Some days this ritual is probably the only reason I don't just stay in bed, too weighed down with my own worries, anxieties and stresses of life to deem the need to keep shuffling on worth losing the heat of the blankets. Oddly, I rise, because I rise.

We are all so connected, we know the fears, failures and heartbreak of not just our own world's but those of our fellow humans from most every curve of the planet. It can weigh you down.  While I understand the need to be in the know and keep up that connection I can't help but believe we all need a little more time by ourselves to help process it all. Not to bury your head and ignore but to clear your head with a little bit of silence before the noise starts anew to fill it once again.

The meditation of autonomy.  In a world where most every moment is chronicled on social media to the point that were losing the ability to pause long enough with the selfies and group pics to actually interact with those around us I think we need this disconnect, I think we need to go back to learning how to live life in our own heads for a bit.  If everything is just an online photo or status it can all start to seem flat and beyond the initial shock people start to just accept it as the norm and scroll on by. We need to step back and process. We need a moment to remember that we ourselves are human in all this insanity so that in turn we don't forget that those in that news feed are too. Disconnect to connect.  It may not solve the world's problems but hopefully it will allow us the ability to rise once more to continue trying to.