Rising with the sun
There are some benefits to getting up at stupid o'clock
This is not one of those posts that will make you feel bad about your own sleeping habits.
I am not a morning person. I’m not exactly a night owl, either: I go to bed about 10:30pm and wake up at 8am. I know that, really, we humans only need around 6-8 hours sleep each night, but I can’t seem to function on less than 9.
That being said, I love the silence of an early morning. Whenever I am up early – because I haven’t slept well, or have an 8am doctor’s appointment, or am on holiday (something about the excitement of exploring some place new, I think. Do you feel the same?) – I relish the way the world is still silent, save for the birds and the few people going about their ungodly-hour business.
I don’t expect myself to ever become the kind of person who gets up at 6am every day. I know the stats suggest that our waking time creeps earlier and earlier as we age, but I fully believe I’ll be the one in the nursing home that’s always missing breakfast.
But while on that weekend away I wrote about last week, I had the sudden urge to see the sunrise. We were staying just opposite Paignton beach and I noticed on the first evening that the sun was setting behind our hotel. It would rise the next morning above the sea, and I knew it would be beautiful.
It was March. The sun was due to rise around 6:30am. My husband and I told my parents that we’d be getting up to watch it. They looked at me and laughed. They would not be joining us, then.
I don’t remember what time exactly we went to bed, but it wasn’t any earlier than was natural. I laid my clothes out in a pile, ready for pulling on in the darkness. As a side note, I love when I wake up and the me of yesterday has already picked out clothes for today-me. I don’t know why I don’t do it more often.
When my alarm went off the next morning, I wouldn’t say I jumped out of bed, but I definitely didn’t hit snooze like I usually do. I opened my eyes – it wasn’t dark at all, so there would be no pulling on of clothes in the black – and really looked at the hotel room, feeling large by being so empty (we didn’t bother unpacking our clothes from our bags. Who does for a weekend trip?). I think Rowan was awake next to me. There have only been a handful of occasions in our 4-year-relationship where I’ve woken up to find him still sleeping. One of us must have asked: ready? And we got up and went out.
The sky was already quite light and thankfully it wasn’t raining. There were a few cars moving along the roads, a few people and their dogs walking along the beach. But it was beautifully quiet.
We walked along the sand for a little while talking, I expect, about the weekend, how I was feeling. Then we walked back toward the pier, where we stood for 10 minutes or more, just watching the sun rise up from behind the horizon.
It was so, so worth getting up for.
I stood there in awe. Awe at the visual beauty, but also at the beauty of how perfectly things need to line up to put on such a show. At how the light from the sun’s rays was split up to cast such colours, how the make-up of the earth’s atmosphere is what makes the sky appear red, orange, yellow. Did you know that sunsets on Mars are blue?
Seeing the sun rise that morning also made me remember that me and my family are not the only ones on this planet. It seems odd to say, given I’d watched couples walking their dogs and people driving their cars only a few minutes earlier. But it’s easy to forget that these individuals have whole existences entirely separate from my own. They would see the sun rise, like I was, and then go on to do whatever it was they did without my knowing anything about it. They could be grieving, like me, or stressed at work, or struggling with their health. Who knows. Then, they’d wake up again tomorrow with the sun and live it all over again.
These were deep thoughts to be having before 7am on a Saturday. But nature does that to you. It promotes warm, fuzzy feelings and social connectedness. This effect applies when you’re outside at any time of day, but it can be amplified by witnessing ‘ephemeral phenomena’; sunrise, sunset, the sudden clearing of clouds to reveal blue skies, the appearance of a rainbow.
Some researchers have even said that viewing the sunrise or sunset could be “used as part of green prescribing” because of its mental health benefits and therapeutic potential. And, as The Cut editor Katja Vujić writes, getting out early isn’t so much about the witnessing of the sun’s rising, but “about giving yourself time and space to exist in relationship with your surroundings. It’s about deep observation and deep listening.”
Let’s compare notes
I’m not suggesting you get up every morning to see the sunrise. You can if you want, though I certainly won’t be. But I would urge you to try it just once, if it won’t jeopardise your health too drastically to lose a little sleep.
Of course, you can opt to see the sunset, it’ll offer the same awe-inspiring benefits. I do find, though, that I feel so much more motivated during the day if I’ve gone outside first thing. The early sunlight can help speed up the end of that groggy, lethargic feeling, called sleep inertia, that comes some mornings and which I always feel if I’ve stayed up too late the night before doomscrolling or playing games on my phone.
What do you think? Is this something that you’ll try, even if only once?
You can search for the sunrise and sunset times in your city here. You may want to find a good spot, somewhere high up perhaps and facing east. A quick Google of ‘good places to view the sunrise near me’ brings up some suggestions. Even if you can’t see the actual sun rise, you’ll see the sky turn from shades of red to pink to blue.
Do it, then show me some photos!
This post is from compare notes, a Substack about being present, focusing less on the bad and more on the good, and paying attention to the beauty around and inside us.