Building A Sunday

The only day of the week I don’t set my alarm is on Sundays. Which is quite the risk, since I love a morning well-spent and would dearly regret missing it by sleeping in. Still, I commit myself to carelessness: I go to bed Saturday night without setting my alarm and I almost always wake up earlier than I usually do on any other weekday. While I believe I am a pragmatic person, there is something to be said about indulging in simple acts of faith.

Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself, I am large - I contain multitudes.”

Indeed, I do contain multitudes, am so often at odds with myself. But the year does not fight the changing season, so should we then despair over any whim that overtake us, our preference that differs one week to the next, the fluctuation in our willpower, that strength to make it through the day with grace that ever wanes throughout the week?

Is it not the very nature of the world to erode, the very ground below our feet not at the mercy of ebb and flow of the tide,  do the mountains not grow from great catastrophe? I remind myself: At the heels of failure bites success, which of course has been said before in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people.

I am reminded of these ideas as we enter the season of change. Well into October, it is officially Autumn and it seems everyday now we are waking up to the rain, the air is cooler here, though not by very much, and I have a renewed sense of being that comes with the transition of the season. I want to be more than what I am, and that feeling is not borne from dread, but from an ancient faith that what I’m reaching for does indeed lie in wait. I am plucking ideas from the little pockets of my dreams and riding a sense of sureness that is somewhat unfamiliar to me.

I find myself eager for the mornings; I am calmer in the earlier hours of the day Yet, I will often stay up late in my impatience to reach that place. In this way I deny myself the peace of the morning, if such a thing exists in the way I imagine it to exist. It is very easy to romanticize something I so rarely see. I know the night and all its ugliness. The darkness of the early morning can only be beautiful when I imagine her quietude, the soft rising sun kissing the horizon, the beauty of a new day not yet tainted by living.

I’m chasing the morning, just as I chase the idea of a “successful” week. This is only harmful if we allow our neurosis to overwhelm us when we inevitably stumble and fall on our journey. We must make room for failure before we simple mindedly work for our goals. Simply, do not let the knowledge that you will fail interrupt the process. Acknowledge the fact before and after, as reassurance that this is the way of things, and only then.

I also believe there is freedom in assigning expectations to yourself and crafting the skill needed to meet those expectations. You are free because you know you can do what you set out to do, or at least you have enough faith to try. Though we must take our material circumstance into consideration, there is virtue in believing we can rise beyond such things regardless of what the conditions may be, and while a willful ignorance of reality can only harm us, we must dare to hope. In fact, I would make the claim that it is essential that we have hope, in spite of the world we live in, for the sake of the world we live in. Cynicism is a very dangerous thing that if allowed, will only inhibit our ability to live sincerely and totally.

So, I have to try, and I have to carry with me the belief that I can succeed. If I accept failure from the beginning, failure as in I can never succeed, my expectation can never rise beyond that. It’s better to keep a steady pace at the start, regardless of the knowledge that I will falter at the end.

I could let the days slip away easily, let them wash away with the rain. Lately though, my hours feel lived in, I am engaged with life and everyone and everything in it.

I build a Sunday on the back of all the days before. The morning comes. I am pleased with who I am and what I’ve done. My bedding and clothes are freshly laundered a day or two ago, I’ve baked something new on Saturday, probably and when I review my To-Do list from last week, I’m always pleasantly surprised by what I managed to accomplish.

There is no expectation today, except that I must live, and dream despite whatever doubts blossom— and wither— under the light of the October sun.