Morgenmuffel: Morning Grumblers - German

On having difficulty with mornings, or perhaps with beginnings that are too often

As a child, I used to struggle to stay up late at night yet never wake up early in the morning. I resisted sleep like a sworn oath never to surrender myself to unconsciousness so as not to miss out on life. Oddly enough, I would delay waking up to the same valuable life in the morning for as long as possible. The arms of sleep were dark and thorny at night but warm, safe, and generous in the mornings.

"You're like a tumbler at night,” my mother would say to me every morning as she struggled to wake me up while also trying not to get enraged because I was adding a regular trouble to her already difficult life.

Photo by Sunguk Kim on Unsplash

However, I am not alone in having an ambivalent connection with sleep. I don't think it's a coincidence that only two weeks ago at Baofixing Aoye in Chinese, we discovered the concept of postponing sleep to take revenge on life, and now we're dealing with people who wake up crawling in the mornings. And it's no coincidence that two different cultures around the world have special words for it.

This week, we have Morgenmuffel from German culture, which has accepted discipline as a way of viewing the world.

Morgen means "morning," whereas muffel means "grouching." Muffel appears as a suffix at the end of several terms and can refer to persons who is reluctant to accomplish a task, but it is most usually used for morning grouchers. Morgenmuffels are the grumpy rhinos of the morning, and you must avoid them if you want to stay positive. They might be your best friend in the evening, but your enemy in the morning.

What is our problem with mornings?

Is it our problem having difficulty getting started? Is it difficult to take the first step or to get into the interrupted flow?

Mornings are our existential challenge.

When we reach night, we have continued to live in an already established flow, for better or worse. The day has begun and is progressing; we are floating through it; either everything is fine or, like hell, somehow we have grown accustomed to whatever is happening. Going to sleep, however, after everyone has learned to get along, seems like being forced to stop the engine while our car is moving. Being compelled to park in the middle of everything, expecting to make a new start the next day.

And this is hard, if not hard, at least leads to hesitation and procrastination.

The philosophy and practice of waking up in the morning. How ridiculous it is to exaggerate what we do every day. That's right, we do this every day but still it looks uneasy. I mean, if God had asked me when he was modeling the world, I would never have suggested any function as the need of sleep. However no one consulted me so far. This is one of those moments when our organic being dominates our logic. Nature has ordered all living beings to sleep for a few hours a day, logic can't say much about it further.

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Somewhere along the way to becoming a night owl, my relationship with sleep changed in the opposite direction. I wake up early in the morning as an adult and don’t want to miss a moment. I’m not a side in the battle of night owls and morning chickens; I have learned that they are only different traits, but I chose the morning birds part long ago, and I am happy with that.

In the morning, I open the window to make a physical connection with the world, with the air, freezing or the hottest, anything nature offers me, and to listen to the birds chirping which infuses me with all the hope the world has.

Every morning I make myself the best breakfast in the world. Turkish breakfasts are definitely one of the richest, and I use this experience. If I have to restart my life every morning, I do it armed with my best weapons. I have to be stronger and more willing and a good breakfast is a very good weapon, I swear.

After breakfast I start working early, a real start. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. If I know what to do and I wake up that day to write, everything flows easily, and I get up proudly. Other days, however, the pangs of creation are all around me, and I spend the day fighting battles in the grip of imposter syndrome. Neither birds chirping nor good breakfasts work. But I still start that day.

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Beginnings are always difficult. Feeling ready, being brave, rejecting the constricting framework of perfectionism and saying yes to creation with a conscious choice makes it a little easier both to start and to continue. Having to make a new start every morning gives us a new chance every day, but it also brings an experience that challenges our procrastinatory side.

It seems to me that morgenmuffels avoid the starting challenge. Here, "making a conscious choice" is a habit that can change the game. I have thought and said hundreds of times, and I think I will say it thousands more, that the choices we make every moment shape our lives. But the most important of these choices is the one we make when we wake up in the morning. Choosing how to start the day is a choice we make most consciously.

Which is our choice? Being the morning creep or the morning dash? The birdsongs or the morning snore?

I don't know what time of day it is when you are reading these words; maybe it's a sunny morning, maybe it's a rainy afternoon, maybe you're just reading this to postpone going to sleep at night, but since you are reading on, and have even gotten to the end, you want to think about "facilitating beginnings".

Welcome, then, we can think a lot together, make this the beginning. Thinking is our job.

Till next week,

— Gulsun

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We are made of stories—that is, of words.

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