Breakfast is worth waking up for

I believe that waking up before you have to, fixing a bowl of something, and easing into the day is the best way to start it. Everything is quiet and calm. If you want to sit and think, you can sit and think. If you want to sit and not think at all, you can do that too.

It doesn’t even matter what you’re eating. Coffee, eggs, cereal whatever. You don’t need to know how to cook, just as long as your space is quiet and your mind is clear.

A lifetime of early rising starts with cartoons and cheerios. Kids get it. They know that a day started at noon is a day wasted. But I, like most teenagers, lost my childhood appreciation for the early mornings. In high school, I would lay in bed, refusing to move until the absolute last second. Even though my mom would always come in right as I was about to doze off again, I would stubbornly lay there, insisting that in just five more minutes I would be energetic enough to start my day.

If only I’d known then that the alarm clock isn’t so shrill when you’re waking up to a cup of something warm, a book or paper to read, or even someone to talk to.

It was my granddad who reminded me that the best way to start your day was rising with the sun. I lived with my grandparents the summer after my freshman year of college, and every morning my 78 year old grandfather would wake up before five, walk around the neighborhood, and be eating a big bowl of yogurt and granola before my first alarm would even go off.

Slowly but surely I would set my alarm earlier and earlier to hang out with him and grab the granola before he ate it all. In the time I would have been rounding out my REM cycle, I was talking to my granddad about why he went into geology, what it was like living in France, and how my great-grandmother went duck hunting at age 99.

My grandfather passed away a few months after that summer. If I hadn’t woken up early for breakfast that summer, I would have still loved him and he would have still loved me. If I hadn’t woken up early for breakfast that summer, I would still have had many great memories. But if I hadn’t woken up early for breakfast that summer I would have missed out on the conversations that showed me the fascinating life he lived and how he became the granddad I admired.

Whether you’re taking advantage of precious, irretrievable time or just indulging in an extra bowl of cereal, I believe breakfast is worth waking up for.