Morning Rituals
BY KARDELEN KALA (TRIN/PREP)
kala@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Humans are creatures of habit. We enjoy having little routines and personal ceremonies. This is true even for the most adventurous wildlife explorers. No matter how much you travel, how much you claim that you hate any kind of predictability or routine, chances are that you repeat some things each morning without even noticing them.
Some people take a shower right after they wake up. This is not me as I would much rather sleep for an extra ten minutes. Some people go jogging or walk their dogs. This is obviously not me either, considering that I live in a dorm, don't own a dog, and that same ten minutes are again very important. There are some people (picture a serious-looking middle-aged person with reading glasses) who enjoy reading the newspaper while having breakfast. Actually I wish this could be me (without the reading glasses part!), but I simply don't have enough time to go out and get a newspaper before heading to my 8:40 class. No, my morning routine is something completely different, but it has everything to do with how I spend the rest of my day. I am talking about my morning coffee.
My alarm goes of at exactly 7:30 each morning. I stumble out of the top bunk, sometimes getting dangerously close to breaking a limb or two. Then I do two things: I get dressed, and I put the kettle on. That's before I even wash my face or put my contacts in! You see, coffee made in a French press requires about 4 minutes to be ready, so that's the first thing I do before tending to my morning toilette. Having recently upgraded from nasty (and way too frequent) servings of instant coffee, I am rather fanatical about my French press. I have to have that dark, delicious-smelling liquid which has the power to wake me up faster and more efficiently than any alarm clock in the world. Breakfast is just an excuse to get some coffee in my stomach (it also prevents me from getting painful stomach ulcers by drinking coffee first thing in the morning without any food). I tried to cut back in the past, but then I figured: I don't smoke, and I dislike about ninety percent of all the alcohol there is. I love to eat fruit, and I am never one to complain about finishing my greens. I try to go to bed on time and keep to a schedule. I have to have something that is bad for me in my life, don't I? Or else, what's the point of living?
What are your morning rituals? Something you consciously or unconsciously do every morning as soon as you wake up? Do you have a song that you always listen to on your way to class (hey, I do that as well, now that I think about it!)? Or do you enjoy reading or watching the morning news in your pyjamas? Or do you wake up everyday in the Bornean jungle to feed the gorillas and get all those damn snakes out of the herb garden?