5 am -- Time for Deep Thoughts

I was never one for early mornings, preferring to stay up way late and sleep in.  Ever since the panic of last year though, I have become Ben Franklin's aphoristic "Early to bed and early to rise."  I don't know if it will make me "healthy, wealthy and wise," but I am truly enjoying my new life as an early riser. I may have been a slug-a-bed for the first 50 years or so, but now, I'm awake for each new day's beginning.

For someone who treasures peace and quiet now over the constant activity, passionate arguments, loud music, and constant stimulation of my youth, the hour before the sun comes up is a gift.  This is the time of day where I can let my mind wander and float, where I can putter and pad about in bare feet and bathrobe, sip hot coffee slowly, and wait patiently for the dawning of a new day. These are days that last year, I wasn't sure I would be around to see.

I'm pretty sure I never appreciated the reality of personal mortality until a year ago. I feel it keenly now, not as an abstract "someday" concept that we all accept as a given, but don't really want to look at full-face, preferring to let that thought slip by into the land of Scarlett O'Hara postponement. We live our lives necessarily thinking about what to do today, where to go next, making our short-term and long-term plans with a single-minded amnesia to the time when the credits will roll and the director yells "that's a wrap!"  We rarely ponder death in general or the specific, certain inevitability of our own demise, until forced to be reminded of it by someone else's passing.  Later, we think...much later.

But now, in middle age, it's not just our pets and our grandparents who are dying, (giving us only a momentary pause that "someday" is lying in wait for ourselves), but our parents and our peers. And occasionally, we get that heart-stopping diagnosis, gift-wrapped and presented on our own plate. 

My first devastating thought was the certainty that up until that moment, I had wasted so much time on so much that was unimportant. It forced me into a retrospective of every unkind word, every character flaw, every situation handled badly--and every regret from the past had the potential to continue to be an unbandaged wound, unresolved for eternity.

Next came the rationalization phase, or as Bill and I call it "Ringing the Reassessment Bell." Being forced to look at time on this earth as finite in the immediate present rather than the distant future, I decided to mend what could be mended, forgive and forget what could not be changed, and resolved to appreciate what I had, instead of obsessing on what I had lost. I am not talking about the physical loss, but the mental and emotional cost. 

I had been given a choice: I could grieve and dwell on the deficits of my life, or I could start over again and start banking my joys and blessings. It was a hard path, for this was a profound change of internal attitude for me. Now that I had been reprieved in the short term, there was a temptation to go on as if nothing had happened, that I just had a little bump in the road, a temporary set-back. But I don't trust that feeling anymore.  I know better. Ignorance is not bliss, it's just ignorance.

My current reality is that this may only be a temporary reprieve. I am really okay with that (as if I had a choice in the matter), and I accept whatever comes next.  In the meantime, I'm going to be a kinder, gentler Pam whenever I can, with a conscious thought that each moment is to be embraced and savored, and hopefully, lived without regrets.

Each dawn is new, and will never be repeated.  I've been given a second chance to discover, learn and yes, even change the way I look at the world. I'm taking that chance. I am happy and resolve to find more happiness, wherever I can.