What if we heard our alarms as serenades, your favorite piano song instead of a crescendoing, blaring disruptions. What if we got out of bed within a minute or so — no need for snoozing. The warmth from your blanket and the fresh smell of your sheets lingers on your skin. You stretch your arms over you head, take a few sips of cool water from the night before, let the early sunlight warm your body, and appreciate the calmness of the mornings.

Make your way to a cozy, comfortable shower, daydream through the quiet beauties. But, the day is starting now, and you feel so strong and alive that just before stepping out, you turn the water freezing — snapping into reality and remembering how wonderful it is to be in the present. You’re here. You’re alive. Isn’t that crazy? Out of 8 billion people, you are one of one.

It’s cold out, and all you can think of is that hot morning coffee, so you throw on your favorite sweater and head to class. You step outside and the shrieking wind stings your cheeks, but who cares, fleeting pain reminds you of the proof of your existence. You are alive.

In your first class, you’re captivated and entranced calculus, measuring odd surfaces and getting walked through proofs that feel like a different language (literally). It’s difficult. You struggle. But the mind needs friction, and you’re privileged to study these, realistically, impractical topics.

Next is english, you get to learn about poetry, Robert Frost to be exact. Diving into grief and love and the human condition. Math builds our reality through the physical, but poetry teaches us the foundations of our relationships. Art is a mimesis of the solitary mind, ambiguous yet valuable and essential to understanding ourselves and others.

And that has all passed by 11 A.M.

Now, you make your way to a coffee shop, and the blazing hot latte hits your tongue, and sweet marble pound cake washes it down. The caffeine floods your system, dopamine spikes, but the coffee isn’t the point. The morning was ordinary, nothing special happened. Life doesn’t announce itself, it just plays constantly, it doesn’t wait for anyone or anything. What changed was you. You realized that mornings shouldn’t be dreaded, everyday is a novel opportunity to live. We die once, we wake every day. And those mornings are something that you get to decide.