Fall has come. No matter what the calendar says, I can tell that Fall has arrived when I wake up and my first thought is about how we need to get out the flannel sheets. Nothing has changed, in a way. The numbers on the clock are the same. The pre-school routine is the same. (I make food. Kindergartner refuses to wake for breakfast. She finally flounces down to the breakfast table. She insists her food is much too cold. I feel it. It is still warm. She still insists it is cold. I heat it up. She insists it is much to hot. She demands cereal. I make it. She eats one bite.) But, because of the earth tilting on an axis (this is real science), it's become much harder to get out of bed. And much harder to do it on a Monday.
Enter Marcus Aurelius--Emperor, Stoic Philosopher, Slayer of Keira's Lame Excuses
I have a love/hate with Stoics. I want to be one so so bad. They thrived on self-control and discipline while I am waging an actual battle with my inner self about whether my feet are cold enough to warrant a trip to the sock drawer or if that is too much trouble and they are just-right cold afterall. Anyway, on a morning when I had serious Bed Goals, Marcus, who was fighting Barbarians, gave me other ideas:
At first day’s light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that, “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for, and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to
lie here under the blankets and keep myself warm?
So I should just wake up and get to the pool and do that laundry and lay into those edits like they are the soon-to-be dismembered heads of confederated Germanic tribal warriors...?
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