Mornings and mithridates

I’m a morning person. I love mornings. Each morning is a privilege of waking up to a brand new day, and every brand new day endows a new window to the world soul. While billions of minds are at work every second, mornings offer a distinct momentum for minds that shake and shape our civilization.

But mornings are not just for big thinkers in our history and successful businessmen — it’s for everyone to enjoy that privilege. While we have different chronotypes, we can still savor the soul of morning at our most preferred time. Call it meditation, quiet time, solitude, processing time, coffee break, or me-time, thinking clearly is undeniably a great help.

Part of being in a space and time like this is to consider discarding our prejudices and biases towards ourselves. While we would leave the table when love or respect is no longer served, we have the option to turn the table around. We might be the toxic ones in our spheres of influence and even towards ourselves.

“Stay who you are.”

Beware of that. Sometimes, taking on the courage to recognize our toxic traits might be the only way out. We don’t (or need to) stay the same all the time. If we couldn’t ask people how have we wronged them, we could go out of our comfort zone to concede that we’ve done something wrong. A word of caution: this, however, might pave a way for unhealthy overthinking.

A more disconcerting fact

This might surprise you: could it be that the only toxic trait we possess would be our cowardice to accept things as they are? There’s no shame in recognizing that you’ve been in a one-way relationship. It’s okay to consider that you’ve been emotionally abused. Just let them go if they want to leave, and you can also go if you want to leave. Though we love thinking about how does the world affects us negatively, it shouldn’t stop there. Oftentimes, the next best thing to do is to distance ourselves from further hurt and pain.

What if we consider trying to stop convincing ourselves that we could still save that emotionally toxic or anomalous relationship? Our delusion of ourselves that we’re doing good in our own bubble might be our only mistake. Isn’t therefore fair to say that our habit of unconscious self-inflicting causes us deeper wounds than the situation itself? And yes, realizing it makes us feel embarrassed and awkward towards ourselves.

Why mornings?

I started talking about mornings because mornings simply remind us about new beginnings loaded with fresh hopes. That’s not uncommon wisdom! Despite this, we would still find ourselves looping between different assumptions i.e. yesterday was a perfect one. If the universe throws us limitless chances to restart, then it’s fine to consider taking new paths.

Make it a habit to put yourself in a space and time of self-assessment. Let’s be smart and strategic in looking for mithridates— confections that would be effective against toxic elements in our system.