I find that the early morning, I rise about 5:30 AM these days, is the best time of day for me. The house is still…still to the point I can almost hear the spider inside the wall spinning her web to capture her meal. The morning sky is dark, turning from black to dark blue as the sun struggles to enter the dayspring sky, and my mind is as an erased blackboard waiting to be filled.

Sometimes I dread the day not because of what it contains, but because of what it will do to the calm that surrounds me in this moment. I can think clearly, unencumbered by the weight of decisions about money, family, or the concerns of daily life. I can simply sit and be—not the natural state of a person but one that I relish just the same.

There should be time like that for everyone; time to simply be without anything else to occupy our whirring machine we call a brain. A machine that is constantly bombarded by thoughts, ideas, messages, sounds, feelings and tastes. A mechanism that is wonderful in its creation but abused in its use. 

Make no mistake as God didn’t err. That muscle sitting above our shoulders was built for such abuse, almost to the point of needing it so as to grow stronger. It truly is a wonderful invention as is the entirety of our existence. 

Existence…that state of being on this planet wherein we find ourselves alive; breathing air, tasting flavors enough to satiate any desire, and moving through our allotted time with others who were gifted the same plane of existence to share our personal timeline.

The only problem is that in this busy world we’ve created—movement, action and stimulation from almost the moment we arise, we never give that gray matter, or the rest of our being, occasion to simply be. Maybe that’s the correct definition of being—to simply be. That, for me, is the glory of the early day and why I’ll continue to meet it at it’s cockcrow.