I hear the fajr call to prayer unsure if I am dreaming it or if my subconscious can really pick up outside sounds while I’m still sleeping. I snooze. Or, to be more precise – because I would never set an alarm for this early—I go back to sleep. I’m too tired to trek all the way to the bathroom to do wuduu and then still stand up and pray. I figure I’ll catch it another day when I’m less exhausted. It is still in my plan to become one of the members of the 5.00 AM club and to make praying fajr a regular part of my daily routine. Asleep and dreaming I dream that I am missing fajr prayer and it fills me up with anxiety. I wake up wracked with guilt and force myself to go to the bathroom to wash my face and perform my ablutions. I couldn’t escape it. Then I have a radical thought: what if I just stayed awake? Instead of just going back to sleep – as my body is used to doing— what if I just called this the beginning of my day and proceeded from there?

I know, for some of you this is not a big deal. So you woke up early one day? That is not a feat. But for me, a person who the day before had gotten up close to 2:00PM, waking up at 5.00 was a complete gear switch. It was a life shift, as only those who wake up early can attest. I haven’t read the 5.00AM club. It stands gathering dust on my shelf, but I have yet to open it and actually peer inside its contents. What I do know though, from reading Enterprise’s My Morning Routine and generally being subjected to a lot of wannabee CEOs, is that a bunch of people across the world choose to start their day at the ungodly hour of 5.00AM (or something within that range) in order to get ahead of the curve. A growing number of people around the world see the benefit of waking up before the sun has awoken, or as the sun is awaking, and taking their day from there.

I’m not gonna list the score of benefits that waking up early offers you. You can probably find that if you do a Google search, read a book on time management or spirituality, or even just use your common sense. What I will say though, is that those people who figured out the trick to life was to wake up earlier were dead right about it. I don’t know about you, but I am a person who values my sleep a lot. I don’t just go to sleep to end my day, I lavish in sleep. I give sleep the respect I would give my mother in law (if I had one). Sleep to me is almost the purpose of the day and my dreamland is so rich with images that I look forward to it every night before I go to bed. That being said, on days where I have managed to wake up earlier (an almost impossible feat because I am the master of the snooze), I have seen that there is another world for those who wake up early.

In the past year two years (as you may know if you follow my blog) I have dealt with some health issues and an ensuing post-traumatic fear. Sleep to me became the cure for my damaged nervous system as well as the place I went to escape from the world. No matter how hard I tried I could not bring myself to wake up earlier than 10.00AM. I think subconsciously I was afraid that having more hours in the day would force me to really face myself and take track of the state that my life was in. That it would force me to be real, instead of hiding behind pop culture and reality tv shows. It didn’t help that everyone around me seemed to believe that sleep was the cure for my missing gut feelings (and for my system in general). Anyone I talked to about my inability to wake up early would respond with “your body needs it”. But doesn’t my body need energy? Inspiration? A kick to it? My doctor talked to me a lot about giving the nervous system what it desires and allowing it to decree the pace of healing, so I went with it and doused myself in sleep. But deep within me, in the parts that had previously witnessed the joy of waking up early, I knew that I was missing out on something big.

But deep within me, in the parts that had previously witnessed the joy of waking up early I knew that I was missing out on something big

After getting up today I meditated and did some yoga. It had been almost a year since I’d done a yoga session and my body unfurled as a cat does when performing its morning stretch. Everything felt rusty. My brain. My body. Even my soul, if I can go so far as to say that. It had ben aeons since I had given myself a once-over and taken track of what I needed as a whole human being. In my better days I had always been a morning meditator. I would start my days by going inwards and then seeing what I needed to do to react to the world. There is a reason why CEOs are where they are in the world, and I believe it is because they learn to give themselves before giving others. One of the benefits of waking up early is that it gives you the space and the time to do that. To go into yourself and find what area of your life you are neglecting or where you are lacking and to address it.

In my list-making days (I’m not even gonna bother explaining that because I’m sure you’ve had them) I would always write down all of the things I would ideally get done in a day. Physical exercise. Work. Play. Mental stimulation. Cooking. Cleaning. I would build for myself the perfect plan and attempt to follow it to a T. Invariably, I always failed. Not necessarily in getting the list done, but in getting it done in a manner that left me energized and happy. Because I woke up so late, I would end up shortening the time I would give myself and so be reactive to others. I would fall in with their plan for me, leaving me bottled up and sensitive to stimulation. Alternatively, I would give myself enough time in the morning, getting my needed “getting ready” time, but then fall short in continuing my list because the time left is too little. Whatever way I played it someone always came out the loser.

I’m gonna share with you a secret. Getting up early is not a way to live life, it is the way. If you value who you are as a human and what your role is in this world you will give yourself the luxury of waking up early. I know. You’re a night owl. You enjoy seeing your friends and blowing off steam after work. You like the way it feels when Cairo is quiet at night and you’re one of the only people walking down the street. I feel you. I have been there. But I can guarantee you that for your mental state and for your body waking up early is the best thing that could happen to you. When you’re up early you have time to set intentions. You have the time to learn new things and engage with your curiosity. You have the time to be, before anyone asks you to do.  There is a reason our biological clock is designed to rise with the sun and you can only find that out when you have committed to getting up early.

I don’t know if this was just a one-off or part of my latest fad, but I do hope that I manage to stick to an early rising agenda. I hope that I manage to prioritize myself and my goals in life and actually give myself the time needed to fulfill everything that I wanna do. I hope that you do to. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

Energetically yours,

Girl With One Earring

All photos courtesy of Akram Reda @akramareda.