Colette Obrien

Which side of the bed do you want to wake up on?

Wakened from the dreamworld to the rising of the sun (even if it’s behind clouds) opportunity calls like a bugle at revely.  What will this day bring, for every day is new? 

How we greet it is up to us. Do we view it  with dread that more will be asked of us than we feel capable of managing; with a sigh of boredom that this day will be like hundreds of others, a repetition of mundane activity; tired, heavy, physically unwell do we pull the covers back over our heads and wish the sun did not rise; or with hope and anticipation of adventure and exploration. 

Attitude is everything.

However, how much control do we actually have over the outlook we wake up with? The old saying, “He got up on the wrong side of the bed” has merit.  Today I woke up on the right side and greeted the day with optimism and joy, but that is not the case everyday. So what determines which side of the bed I get up on?

Health, rest, chemical balance, hormones, dreams, fears, worries, negative or positive patterns of thought  . . .   including unseen influences outside our awareness; astrology, elemental shifts in the earth, cycles of the moon, the weather . . . !!! So many things influence which side of the bed we get up on that it seems virtually impossible to name the reason or reasons for a sunny attitude versus a dark one.   

It appears we have little choice, yet though we are at the effect of so many different things, we also determine many of them ourselves, and it is to that list we must look for help to find the way to choosing our attitude.

The List:

1. Good diet, exercise, and rest. Knowing our individual chemical and hormonal balance, and monitoring changes over time. Avoiding habits that harm physical well-being.

2. Getting to know and take care of emotional needs. Saying “no” to overextending.

3. Maintaining mental fitness through stimulation; learning new things, dialogue to exchange ideas and some form of mindful practice like meditation to learn how to control thoughts. 

What we control is what we take in and what we keep out of our body/mind. 

As for the rest . . . learn to accept. Tomorrow; acceptance, what is it?

 Oddly out of the ordinary is whimsy’s definition.  Just the feel of the word on my lips makes me smile, a verbal form of Prozac for the spirit.  Like the archetypal trickster in Jung’s psychology and the Tarot deck, whimsy tricks us into a shift of perspective.  To see the ordinary a little out of kilter allows us to play with the object outside of the box of our usual view/belief about it.  Whimsy stands things on their head, or tail, or puts ballet tutus on those we’re intimidated by. Harry Potter learned to handle his fear of dementors by making fun of them.

Playful spirits are a form of whimsy; making the imagination and all of the “unseen” world into a place we can venture into without so much fear.  That’s not to say we can rid ourselves of nightmares but we can balance the tendency of the mind to fear the dark by seeing light within the darkness.

Most of us in the western world today have important concerns but they’re not life threatening; meaningful work, the mortgage, money for our children’s college, our daughter’s weird boyfriend, etc.   We don’t live in Sub-Saharan Africa or any number of other places where whimsy would be inappropriate.  We normal neurotics, as Woody Allen spoofs regularly, are candidates for lots more whimsy.  Most of our fears aren’t helped along by worrying, but will benefit greatly by lightening.

On the table in the dentist’s office waiting room I visited too regularly as a child, was, “Laughter the Best Medicine.”  It really did help make those fearsome visits a little more tolerable. Proof of that is that I remember the jokes, not the drill.

Whimsy is also considered childish. And what is meant by childish? Playful, imaginative, fun-loving, fearless, courageous, adventurous, curious, uninhibited . . .

If by being whimsical adults we tap into that list, I say “Go For It.”