#Monomad Challenge - not static

Good afternoon, #Monomad friends

Here is my entry for the #monomad contest by @brumest and @monochromes.

A New Day

How often do we realize that when we wake up, we are actually being given the chance to live another day, a few more hours, or even just one more minute? It is always something we are granted, not something that is guaranteed. One day, we will not wake up, or perhaps we will not even fall asleep—in the true sense of the word, not in some romanticized way.

Rarely do we have the true opportunity, upon waking, to simply let the silence wash over us. We transition from one state to another, and often adopt automatic behaviors without even thinking or truly realizing that we are doing them.

We wake up, turn on the bedside lamp, slip on our slippers, and almost mechanically head to the bathroom for our morning routine. Minutes later, we realize we’ve probably taken longer than we should have, especially on this day, when we wanted to get to work early so we could start working on that report that should have been finished twenty-four hours ago... Once at work, we drink our coffee, still half-asleep and unaware of the true miracle unfolding before us.

This week, almost everything was just as I’ve just described. But fortunately, not everything. In fact, I woke up, and instead of jumping out of bed, after turning on the table lamp, I went to open the blinds. The day was already making itself known. It was still 5:45 a.m., but there was already enough light that the streetlights didn’t need to be on.

I gazed for a few moments at the view I always see from my bedroom window, but today I lingered a little longer. I let myself be carried away by the pleasant sensation of connection with the outside world. Nothing different happened outside of me. Only I had the sense that I could do something different.

I followed the same morning hygiene routine, but even though it took the same amount of time—or roughly the same amount of time as it always does—I didn’t worry particularly about whether I was half a minute late or not. That wasn’t important. The first rays of light entered me, and it seemed as though my body woke up more quickly.

When I arrived at work, I lingered a while in the outdoor park and the entrance lobby. Everything was probably just the same as on other mornings this week, but I took it all in as if it might actually be my last morning.

Nothing could guarantee that I’d be here tomorrow to witness the new day.

Everything looked the same on the outside.

The world was exactly the same.

Not static.

And inside me, I let that small difference I made at the start of my morning leave me not static, but completely different.