Most mornings I wake up and think I ought to just sleep in. I can skip a day: just this time no one will notice. It’s a pandemic, no one is paying attention, no one really cares.
Then something lifts me up and out of bed and says “Get up, get out, create.” or as I said a long time ago, “Show up. Look up. Translate.”
When I codified my plan to do something daily that made me feel better – created guidelines for my personal creative practice – since I stuck with what I codified my life experienced has changed radically for the better.
Today I realized how my seeing has become so much more alert since I started my daily morning haiku practice. I think even more so since I chose to write sunrise haiku.
This slight change in schedule – on purpose – has allowed me into each day as it begins. It feels like an initiation into a society who are all in on a secret the people who are asleep all around us don’t have a chance to get.
Seriously: today I sat at a table at Lake Ming and had my phone in its tripod and the rays of sunrise made visible through the camera reached to me as I watched and wrote, as if it was saying thank you.
People get caught up – I get caught up – in anger and frustration and a sense of incredulity when I witness even the slightest taste of the horrors swirling around us as of late.
The sunrise reaching out to me – in gratitude – and my “new seeing” is a feeling of communion I haven’t felt since holding my newborns or when I was a little girl in the back seat of our turquoise country squire watching in awe as I believed the stars were actually following me, specifically. That’s what it felt like on that magical evening so long ago.
This simple act of writing haiku every day has helped me to reconnect with everyday miracles and wonder. It wasn’t an instant awareness with the first few haiku, but now – a day doesn’t go by without a surprise.
Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is a writer, a poet performer, a Creativity Coach, A Social Media Whiz and a Mother of three. One of her greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet.
Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in 2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. Click the graphic below to join the Private Facebook Group to join the conversation!
Jojo Reyes Jr says
If writing haiku shall help you positively in anyway, then I’d say go for it 🙂
Martha says
I have to get up as soon as I wake up. My day starts by taking a walk around our garden and just looking at all the beauty around me and listening to the birds telling me it’s going to be a wonderful day n
Jeanine Byers says
I’m so glad that it has been such a powerful practice for you! And that you have been able to maintain your commitment to it. Love the gratitude, too!
vidya says
I do love those days when I get up early (not often enough as I like though).. and writing early in the morning sounds perfect