If you do not find a way to generate some mindfulness at the beginning of the day it becomes even harder to find the time as the day continues and you get caught up in your inevitably busy life.

One such practice is to find a way to remind yourself to breathe and smile even before you sit up in bed and place a foot on the ground. Remind yourself that this day is a gift, that it is wonderful to be alive, even if the day before you is busy and includes people and tasks you would rather not have to deal with.

Try to find a way to touch the wonderfulness of life even before you get out of bed. Some of the clouds passing through may involve planning and worrying about the day ahead, but at least yo ucan create, alongside such thoughts, the awareness that at its base this is all wonderful.

—Thomas Bien, Mindful Therapy, qtd. in Daily Doses of Wisdom #124

I woke this morning from a terrible dream in which I was cursing people I love over nothing. Waking, the dream stuck in my head. I was beginning the day clenched, lost to anger and hurt.

Whatever the reason, I asked myself if I could take a breath and try to unclench. I inhaled, held, and exhaled feeling myself opening as though in e.e. cummings' "somewhere I have never travelled":

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

At first, I breathed to push against the dream, but then I let some of that go too. The dream stayed with me but not the clenching or as much of the fear. I'm still having to remind myself to breathe and finding it difficult to smile, but it really is wonderful to be alive and awake in this world.

That and now I'm thinking of the somewheres I have never travelled more than I'm remembering that terrible dream. The lightness of breath somehow lifts the weight of dread. Almost as though I were able to do magic.