The Meaning of a Day by Nikita Gill
Each new dawn brings with it 15 new reasons for laughs,
100,000 new heartbeats in your chest,
Your life-blood voyages 168,000,000 miles.
And each new morning on this earth translates
7,200 earthquakes in the upcoming 24 hours
More than 18,000 thunderstorms and our planet
will be struck by lighting 8.6 million times.
And in space?
The passing of this day
Will mean the wondrous birth of approximately 275 million stars.
This is why every day is an opportunity for rebirth.
This why no matter what they say,
You must never underestimate your own worth.
This morning, at 6:15, my alarm went off. My alarm is not an annoying sound per say, as I discovered through trial and error that if the sound was too startling or too frustrating, my days were more likely to feel frazzled and rushed. It isn’t too melodic either though, because I am quite a heavy sleeper and if the alarm doesn’t have some kick to it, I will simply incorporate the music into whatever I am dreaming about and sleep for another three hours.
But, as I said, the alarm went off and I opened my eyes and took stock of the situation before hitting the snooze button and closing my eyes for eight more minutes. Now, I want to be clear that I did not go back to sleep, though to the untrained eye it would seem like I was, but rather, I merely laid there with my eyes half-closed, taking some deep breaths and having a moment of consciousness before things got started.
Both my cats were asleep next to me and were unimpressed by the alarm and my handling of it, and I watched them yawn and curl back in on themselves. Those two will continue to sleep whether I get up or not. The dog, on the other hand, was ready and excited about my alarm. Sully had stationed himself at the edge of the bed and was sitting and waiting, trying not to make noise so as to not rush me, but posed ready to jump me the moment to say hello to him so he could lay on me and make me receive all his love.
The alarm began again, announcing that my eight minutes was up. And while I do sometimes snooze for another eight minutes, today I did not. Today I turned off the alarm. I took a deep breath, and then my day began.
Now that I have shared my waking up story with you, I want you to take a moment and think about your first waking moments today. While I am sure there are differences between our stories, there are probably many similarities. We might get up at different times, but by your presence here ,it seems pretty evident that you did, in fact, get up this morning. Like me, you probably have an alarm though I know some people just magically arise at the same time each day with no external aids.
What is so interesting about this moment is while we get there by different methods, we all experience this time in which we are on the edge of making what will end up being hundreds of decisions in our day. Thousands of choices, actions, reactions, commotions, deep breaths, shallow breaths, hushed tones, and loud noises are all about to be born from this moment. This really sort of sacred and special moment when whole new worlds are about to be created. Its like the big breathe before God shouted “Let there be light!” in the first Hebrew Creation story.
And it is in this moment, this moment before anything has happened, this moment of transition from sleep to waking, from night into the new day, this moment that all is possible, but nothing has yet happened, it is this moment of the day I want to give some attention to.
As we go through this series and look at different parts of our day, I hope we will learn a lot of lessons, about ourselves, about our values, about what gives our lives meaning. But unless we get this first lesson from this first moment of our day, nothing else will make sense. It is this lesson that must be embraced before we can learn anything else and that is the lesson that is enshrined in our first principle that we as Unitarian Universalists believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and all people, including you.
In that moment before the day has really begun, before you make great choices or feel crappy, before you are productive or you find yourself running behind on everything. Before that outfit makes you feel fat or that smoothie makes you feel great. Before the coffee, before the emails, before anything. You have inherent worth and dignity just as you are, just because you are. It is not earned, it is not a prize, it is not a gift and it cannot be taken away. You are worthy because you are. You have dignity because you are. You are worthy of respect and love and care and compassion because of who you are, not because of what you will or will not do in the day ahead.
If we are going to strive to be people of Values, people whose days are imbued with meaning and purpose, we must awaken both literally and figuratively, to the truth that we are worthy of the joys and blessings of our day, and that those around us are worthy of those things as well. If we can, in those first moments of waking, affirm to ourselves that we deserve to treat ourselves with care and respect, and commit to extending that treatment to all we meet in our day, we will have started our day in a way that will set ourselves, and our communities up for a day of success and well-being.
Friends, in roughly 18 hours, a new day will begin again. The sun will rise in the east and peek through our windows and when that happens and we open our eyes to the new day, I hope we will have the courage to take a breath, believe in ourselves and in our world, and rise to greet our day with the dignity and intention it deserves.
Amen
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