“I’m not a morning person.” At least, that’s what I’ve told myself for years, but I’m starting to questions its validity. Is it the full truth or just a story I tell myself?
I think it may be more true to say, “I’m a night person.” I like the night—I like being the last person to go to bed, to revel in the silence of the darkness and to be the one to close out the night. The problem with that is that it makes it harder to wake up in the morning. I often don’t like to be the first one to wake. As much as I like the silence in the morning, I think I prefer the silence in the night.
But maybe that is dependent on many environmental variables that I often overlook. If it’s warm outside, I love the mornings—when cold, I mostly despise them. If I’m living by myself, I can be the last one to go to bed and go to bed early—if with others, I’m often waiting until they go to bed and then add an hour or two afterwards for me to go to bed. If I have somewhere to go in the morning to leave the house then I often will sleep early—if nowhere to go, then I’d rather stay up late. If I put the internet aside for the evening, then I’m often ready for bed earlier—if I keep looking at it, then I often engage in deep conversations and prolong the bedtime by a few hours.
I think that I want to believe that I am who I am, regardless of the environment. And then I reflect and realize how little of that is true. The environment shapes me so much beyond recognition. Take away TV and internet? I’ll go to bed much earlier because there are fewer distractions. Give me unlimited, fast internet with many shows to watch? Ah, I could keep delaying and delaying the time I close my eyes.
Like most things in life, I think it’s about balancing the two: environment and our reactions to it. There are many things in the environment I can change—internet, TV, time for eating, types of conversations I have at which time—and many things I can’t easily change, if at all—the weather, who I live with, work schedule, noise outside, etc. While some of those things are possible to change, they may require a lot of work and then other things get introduced to the environment.
I’m not sure what the secret is. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s about tweaking and playing with both the environmental things and the internal things. Maybe it’s just recognizing that we’re humans and we’re affected by both.
