The Early Crickets or why I've become a morning person

"Age is my alarm clock," the old man said. "Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have a longer day?

This is Old man Santiago talking to Manolin the little boy in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." I guess age wakes you up when you're growing old.

When I was in my youth, just like everybody else, I used to sleep as if there's no tomorrow, as if I have all the time in the world. I had no sense of urgency at all and time was measured by fun, and fun accelerated time. So, I found out.

Now in my middle age, time revealed how precious time is. I guess when I realized that I have already spent half of my life, that is granting I lived to be ninety years old, there's this growing desire to slow things down. To take it easy because who knows, the ninety may turn out to be just be sixty, or fifty, no one ever knows and to spend that precious little time pursuing dreams and careers seems to me to be a waste of little time left.

I remember an OFW acquaintance who spent almost a third of his life working in the middle east ruing how mean life is. Now that he has the money to eat and enjoy the things he wants, and now that he has all the time in the world, he just couldn't anymore. He is old, hypertensive, diabetic, rheumatic, his body tired. Lucky are those who are born with silver spoons.

Slowing down time...

I wake up at four, usually. I take my coffee outside while it's still dark with Alden, our dog, half awake, looking at me. I guess the dog got used to the routine that it stopped barking at being disturbed. Coffee outside is even more enjoyable when it's raining. The sight of rainwater cascading from tree branches is so soothing that the desire to go back to bed is defeated by the joy of seeing refreshment. 

 To go to work before the sunrises is an experience that I have come to enjoy. The view outside my classroom windows are mostly corrugated tin roofs but farther there's a hill where I could see the sun rising. The light slowly entering the classroom is something to behold. Maybe age does that, sentimental something.

Hearing the crickets still singing and our janitor busy collecting trash. 

Watching the early morning news with the class early bird. And looking down from my classroom and watcing the pupils arrive to school first by ones, twos, then slowly building up to a crowd. The sight gives my mind the time to adjust to the building up noise, ruckus of pupils crowding to their classrooms.

Anyway, still have some stuff to do..."grades."