Do I dare to wake up early?

The above in reference to Prufrock's famous question about the peach, in acknowledgement that getting older changes things about us that we might not expect ...

I have been thinking about Lent, which begins next week, and trying to decide on something to give up. Last year I did sugar, and had a pretty good experience. Too good, maybe – it was hard, but not as hard as I thought it was going to be. This year, rather than focusing on food, I've been playing with the idea of taking a look at one of my other less favorite habits: sloth. What if, I've been asking myself, instead of planning my entire life around being able to sleep as late as possible every morning (based on what I have to do that day), I decided to bite the bullet and get up at the same time every single day for 40 days?

I'm not talking about sleep deprivation, which I don't think is healthy – all I'd have to do to get enough sleep would be to plan ahead and go to bed at an appropriate time. Instead, I would simply be regulating myself fairly strictly in an area where I've made a great point of allowing myself the maximum latitude possible. The goal is twofold: one, to challenge myself by doing something really hard – not so hard that I can't do it, but harder than I'm comfortable with – and two, to create a new habit of better self-discipline.

My usual practice is to give myself just enough time in the morning to get dressed and transport myself on time to wherever I need to be. Usually I wake up earlier than I need to, and spend the time before the alarm moving into and out of dreams, looking at the various things my mind has brought up to be played with, and stretching and snuggling with the Taterman. I've also been known to make liberal use of the snooze button – a great way to get into lucid dreaming, by the way, if you've ever been interested in it. I almost never just get up when the alarm sounds. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I did that. My dreamtime is too important to me.

But having Mr. A out of the house by 5 a.m. every weekday for these last many months has caused me to wonder what it would be like if I were the one waking up early. Could I even do it? Why would I? Why should I? After all, most mornings I don't even have to be to work until 10.

That last point is actually what's caught my imagination. If I have until 10 a.m. before I have to be anywhere, and if I could manage to get up quite a bit earlier than that, just think of how different my day would feel! I would suddenly have all this extra time in the morning to do whatever I want, and in the evenings I would probably not have my usual terrible time falling asleep because I'd be tired from having been up so early.

Just for the record, I'm not one of those people who believes getting up early is somehow naturally superior to and more virtuous than getting up late – we all have the same number of hours in the day, and early or late, as long as you're healthy and feeling good and getting everything done that you need to do, what does it matter what time you sleep? I will admit to feeling vaguely jealous of people who always wake up very early – the way they talk about the calm and quiet of the early morning, the beauty of the sunrise, etc. etc. makes me feel nostalgic for something ... I'm not sure exactly what. My experience of waking up very early is that I usually end up feeling nauseous, disoriented and slightly surreal for most of the day. And then, when it's time to go to bed again, I have trouble falling asleep.

Still, I'm curious about what it would be like if I did it every day for awhile. Would I get used to it, or would it mess up my sleep patterns even more? What would I do in those extra morning hours?

Probably the most important question is, what time would I choose to wake up every day? Remember, I'm not trying to totally destroy myself – just mix it up a little. Also, I'll be applying the same schedule on weekends as well as during the week, so it can't be too brutal. In addition, there's the matter of my strange number-phobia, which dictates that only a few times in each hour are okay to wake up at (e.g., 7:25 is acceptable, 7:30 is not). Right now I'm leaning toward something in the 6:30–7 a.m. range, and considering departing from my list of approved times. Maybe 6:41? 6:44? Or is that too wimpy? Maybe I should say 6:03 or 6:11?

What time do you usually get up in the morning? Do you use the snooze? How many times?

(An aside: I've been preparing for this new discipline by flossing my teeth every single day since I went to the dentist a few weeks ago. Flossing is another one of those things I hate to do, but which I know I should do ... So I've been being diligent, and just within the last few days have reached a place where I don't mind doing it anymore. My earlier habit was to do it only once or twice a week (terrible, I know!).)

In connection with all this Lent business, I wonder if you're aware that there are Seven Contrary Virtues that correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins? These are Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality and Diligence, and practicing them is supposed to save you from Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth, respectively. Who knew?

Ever since I read Thich Nhat Hanh's rewriting of the Five Wonderful Precepts about ten or eleven years ago, I've been totally on the bandwagon with this idea of phrasing credos (or whatever you want to call them) in positive terms instead of negative. He says, as an example, that if your rule is "Don't kill," it's so specific and closed-ended that it leaves all sorts of ways for people to get around it. Someone might say, "Well, it's true that I eat meat – but hey, I'm not the one who kills the animal!" Whereas if you phrase it in a positive way, "Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and to learn the ways of protecting the lives of people, animals and plants," it creates a much larger and more meaningful challenge. You're not just held to obeying one strictly-defined "NO," but are free to explore all the countless ways of saying "YES!"

In a way, I suppose Lent is about saying No. I'm not now nor have I ever been Catholic, so I'm not all that familiar with the concept, though I do find it useful. In general though I like to say Yes more than No ... especially because No seems to come so naturally to me. So maybe instead of bumming myself out with the stern and intimidating "Thou shalt not sleep past 6:44 a.m." I'll create a positive version of the same challenge: "I shall rise to greet each beautiful new day at exactly 6:44 a.m.!"

Ugh. This is going to need some work. And possibly a new alarm clock as well.