Why I Now Love Getting Up at 5:30

As I've gotten older, I'm starting to realize how much time I've wasted and how much there still is left ahead of me. Just thinking about it, that I've most likely lived out a fourth of my life already, is a chilling thought. Growing up we as kids always wanted school to fly by and it seemed liked summer would last an eternity. But we've gotten older and the things have started to slow down. Sure, you still have that night with friends that ended all too quickly or the lecture in English that made you look at the clock every five seconds. Now though, and I say this because I'm starting to realize it myself, time has come into that stretch where every precious second counts. I've left behind that time of being a kid where things would go on forever and moved on to the time I will experience for most of my life.

There's a reason that my days are now seeming more fulling. The getting up at 5:30 so I can commence a hour and a half walk to school everyday helps with that, but that by itself isn't enough. It's almost like I have a new lease on life (hard to believe for being nineteen) but all the same I'm seeing things in a different light. When I leave in the mornings, I'm seeing a world that I really never noticed til now. I watch the sun rise as I cross the Warrenville bridge into Lisle, fog rolls over the grass and Dupage river with lazy serenity as it gives way to morning light, squirrels scamper across fields looking for nuts, an auburn colored fox darts across 53 in search of food, and the roads are filled with empty calmness. My head is most clear at this peak hour and the strong smell of coffee rises from mug as I glance at the dew sparkling in the grass.

What's the point of all this description? Is it me being a sensitive soul reflecting? To some extent I suppose so, but in a more honest sense its me starting to slow down, to adjust to this new sense of time. Yes, I'm getting older and the sand trickles down my hour glass with each passing day but that by no means I need to be in a rush. I'm taking things in as I want to, there's no reason to do otherwise. Why should I miss seeing the beauty of a hawk gliding through the air because I need to go do this or that? I think this walking has been a great experience for me and will continue to be. The next time you wake up in bed with the intent of rolling over and drifting back off (I know you all do it, don't lie to me!), get up and get out. There's too much in this world to be seen in the time we were blessed to have to be lying around in bed.