Good Morning, Beautiful

This song kind of encompasses a bunch of different themes that I've blogged about before. I wanted to try and find something new to write about that wouldn't just be a rehashing of posts past.

I blogged about sunrises heralding in a new day full of possibilities and being a comforting reminder of consistency. 

I've written (with some help) a post about the similarities between surfing and finding that special someone.

I have confessed my inner hopeless romantic.

I'm saving "the sun always shines" concept for a specific song (I've got a good portion of the post written [I just have to play by my own rules and wait for the song to be stuck in my head one morning] but this isn't the right context for it).

I know! I'll share a story from when I was in high school:

My freshman year in high school, I also started early morning seminary. At 6:30 every morning, we'd meet at the chapel across the street from the high school and have a class on the history of the church and the revelations which Joseph Smith published in the Doctrine and Covenants. I'm not inherently a morning person, but I have what I like to call consciousness-inertia. It often takes a good push to get started in the morning, but once I'm up I'm up and going for the day. Over the past few years, I've actually developed the ability to nap. Before then, I would just push through until I got to go to bed late that night.

Well, time getting ready in the morning added to time of seminary every morning ensured that I was awake by my first hour at Barry Goldwater High School. I had honors biology, and I made sure everyone knew that I was awake. I was bright and cheery. I was happy to be alive and at school. I greeted everyone and just felt generally wonderful.

It drove people crazy.

I can't tell you how many times in the course of a year I was asked why I was so happy or if I could just be a little less enthusiastic. Granted, I probably did take it a bit to the extreme, but it was a wonderful feeling. That reputation for excitement and energy definitely stayed with me and I'm pretty sure it actually helped shape me as well. When I got to my junior year, was taking a really challenging courseload, working part time, and doing the musical, I didn't have much energy to spare. BUT, my friends expected me to be sunny and happy, and so, regardless my state of general sleep-deprivation, I was.

As the wise father of one of the girls I went to seminary was fond of saying: "Fake it till you feel it." Don't let someone tell you what you can or can't do or be. If today you aren't who you want to be, then today is the day to start becoming that person.

It's a good morning, beautiful day.