addicting because apparently we do care (or, we come to care through repetitive use). It really is a large chat room for you and your followers to spit random information out. Eh, for all it’s good and all it’s bad, I love it! Yes, I’m a dumb sheep blindly following this crowd with my fellow tweeters. Bleat!! Bleat!!Personally, I’m not really one to follow celebrities (to each their own, it’s just not my thing…I don’t really care about what most of them think or have to say), however, some of them catch me by surprise every now and again. I recently started following Lil’ Wayne. Someone was trying to hate and say that he needs to not be high all the time so he can tweet logical stuff, so I went to his page to see what all the fuss was about. I have no idea the level of sobriety of the man when he tweets, but I will say that they are actually deep, and quietly, might serve as a basis for some of my future posts. Dare I say, I’d encourage you to join Twitter if only to follow Weezy F. Baby and push yourself to think a little deeper and a little differently. Doubt me? Look at the #lilwaynedeeptweets TT. (sometimes, I can’t believe how integrated Twitter jargon is into my daily communication)
However, as much of a fan of Lil’ Wayne as I am, this post is actually driven by a post by Tyra Banks, whom I don’t even follow. “woke up before my alarm this morning. early bird gets the worm! Wats w/ that saying anyway? Do u think getting up early gets u more in life?” As someone who has her fair share of troubles with sleep, I often find myself waking up obscenely early for no particular reason – no work to rush off to, no class to go to or cram for, i.e. no real responsibility. When I find myself up and semi-alert with nothing to do, I usually wind up quoting this very same thing to myself for inspiration to do something - “The early bird catches the worm.” I say it for inspiration, but am I lying to myself just to feel a little less worthless for wasting time by being up unnecessarily? Hmmm…
Without thinking twice, I’d say it’s probably not the truth. Let’s analyze. From a purely literal analysis of the quote, two easy arguments could be made to dispel this notion. 1) The early bird probably only catches the early worm. What happens if the bird is earlier than the worms? Could he, in fact, starve from wasting energy waiting around for the worms to crawl out of their holes? Perhaps. Plus, he’s still got to be stronger, smarter, and faster than the other early birds that are likely to pop up and fight for those early worms - it’s never just you! 2) I’m sure that as long as you’re not the last of the birds to get up, you’ll still catch a worm. Might not be the first worm, might not be the fattest, juiciest worm imaginable, and it might not be your preferred worm, but you’ll probably still scrounge enough to survive to see another day.
Moving outside the context of literality and into real world application, do I really think getting up earlier gets me more in life? In short, probably not. Not unless I am fully functioning when I wake up, which 90% of the time couldn’t be further from reality. Regardless, there is something to be said about waking up early and getting thing accomplished by noon, that most people couldn’t squeeze into a 24-hour day. So, I suppose that if I wake up with enough time to shake off my grogginess and still have a significant amount of time left before others arise, then yes, I think I will get more out of life than the average person. I think I definitively will get more accomplished each day and still have “me time,” with the additive effect of accomplishing more over the course of my life than most people will by the time they hit mid-life…or at least that’s my goal.
I’m not really sure about the applicability of the bird analogy to my life, but I’ve found this old African proverb a bit more appealing.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.
Nothing like the prospect of death to light a fire under your behind! Let’s go!!!
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