For the most part, a sunrise has a certain inevitability
about it, an
inexorability,
a
gravity
which trains me. My listening (if you will) for the sunrise is awe
... along with the recognition "This is the way it is, this is what's
to align with, this is what I intend to align my life
with.". The morning news engenders something completely different in
me. My listening for the morning news is compassion ... along with the
thought "It doesn't have to be this way.". While the sunrise (in this
sense) is my trainer, it's the morning news which showcases what's
wanted and needed - in other
words,
the morning news showcases what opportunities there are to make a
difference.
I no longer own an alarm clock. I mean that literally. It's also a
metaphor. The last time I owned an alarm clock, it wasn't the
clockwork kind you wind up, although I did own one of
those once. It wasn't the kind which rings when a tiny hammer
repeatedly and rapidly strikes tiny bells on its top. Rather it was
battery powered. It made an electronic sound. When its battery
eventually went flat, I never replaced it. Later I gave that alarm
clock to Good Will.
If I need an alarm ie a reminder (an alert actually), I
can set one on my cell phone. Since this is the digital age (no longer
the clockwork age), I can set five different alerts on my
cell phone ... and I carry two cell phones. The metaphor of no longer
owning an alarm clock isn't I don't set alerts. I do. Setting alerts
goeswith (as
Alan Watts
may have said) being count-on-able. It's I no longer set my life
to that alarm clock. It's I've set my life to Life itself
and to the natural day. Giving away that alarm clock, is a metaphor for
this.
My home faces east. Simply opening my blinds before retiring ensures
I'll
wake
when the sun rises and
floods
the
Cowboy Cottage
with light. Actually the process really begins much earlier than that:
at the break of dawn. Waking with the rays of the sun and watching the
sunrise gives a qualitatively different start to the day than my
erstwhile waking with the cacophony of a wind up alarm clock and
watching the morning news on rabbit's ears television.
Later in the day, to be sure, I'll find out what's happening in the
world. I stay informed via the internet and / or via NPR
ie National Public Radio and / or via USA
Today. But there's something profound, something more
useful about marshaling my first thoughts of the day
started by the dawn and occurring against a
backdrop
of the sunrise, than started by a jangling alarm clock and occurring
against a
backdrop
of the morning news on TV.
I don't
eschew
the morning news until later in the day because it's mostly
bad news. Negative or positive, bad or good, it's all
just ... the ... morning ...
news ..., right? It's a commodity. If you removed
the date from newspapers and published last month's newspapers today,
would it really make any difference? Would anyone even
notice? Mind you, given our appetite for bad news, any news
outlet touting to publish only good news would probably
find itself out of business and bankrupt in very short order.
Now, here's the thing: this so-called bad news, this so
called appetite for bad news isn't someone else's.
It's not theirs. It's mine. It's all of ours. The
concerns of the world as shown on the morning news aren't someone
else's concerns. They're my concerns. They're
our concerns. They show the
vast
abyss between the way the world is, and the way it could be. In this
way, it's the morning news, it's the commodity which is
the morning news, which inspires me to make a difference.
But it's the sunrise I choose to be
woken up by.
It's the sunrise I choose to train me in the way it is, to train me in
what's to align with, to train me in my intention to align with it. For
this I don't need an alarm clock.