We can always talk ourselves out of being true to our promises. But it’s harder to do that at 5:00 in the morning because there are so few distractions. It is almost as if for those moments, time has stopped.
But that of course is an illusion. All the while I work, the world outside the window has begun to change. I see the dark begin to lighten into gray, the gray lighten and turn white as the yellow arc of dawn creeps out of the horizon. Glancing at the window reminds me that I am still working and that the earth is moving, eating my time, my life away bit by bit.
As unforgiving as time is, habit is one of the strange gifts it provides to anyone who takes the trouble. Doing something over and over at the same time every day ingrains the ritual into the life, much in the same way that walking through the woods in the same direction every day leaves a trail. Imagine the earth before it was shorn of forests, meadows, vales, grasslands—before there were roads and highways. What a remarkable discovery a path would be in such a world—like a road home.
The brain is similar to that pathless land, for it is alive every moment with a thousand possible directions, thoughts, and desires. The worn path created by habit enables the mind to focus, to know what to do at a particular moment.
As Charles Duhigg points out in his book The Power of Habit, because habits are located in one of the most primitive parts of our brains, they are a basic part of what enables us to function.
Furthermore, they enable us to save enormous time that we would otherwise spend arguing with ourselves: this path, that path, the other? Habit allows us to move into automatic pilot. We do not have to decide if we want to write or practice piano or meditate. We do it every morning because it is our habit.
Aristotle once observed, “We are what we repeatedly do.” For the alcoholic or the compulsive gambler or even the person with a three-hour-a-day Sadako addiction, this is not good news. That person may never escape the maze in which she finds herself. For the aspiring writer, or athlete, or musician, or ascetic, Aristotle’s statement suggests not damnation but opportunity, not a closed door but a path.
Day after day with the same unstoppable rhythm of the sun rising slowly over the edge of the earth, we slowly become that person we have promised ourselves we would be.
And the muse—what about the muse? Does the muse show up for writers who rise at 5:00 a.m.? Almost never. She is fickle that way.
But when she does show, I’m there waiting.
Day after day... we slowly become that person we have promised ourselves we would be.