Skip to main content

Waking up to a Gold Morning


Every morning is a new promise.  It is the beginning of the rest of my life.  It is the opportunity to begin anew once again.  To start the journey again with the confidence that I can change what can be changed and with the insight that I will accept what cannot be changed.

What makes a good morning begins with the pre-dawn freshness of the cool air that distils through the chinks in the window.  The sun has not risen yet.  The lark has not only risen but is on its wings.  It whistles its usual tune from its blissful height.  The tune may be usual but its meaning depends on my response to it.  I choose to whistle back.

That’s what converts my good morning to a gold morning.  My choice is the miracle worker.  I choose to smile rather than smirk.  I choose to respond rather than react.  I choose to hope rather than give up. 

I set my value rather than let others do it.  I forgive myself and others.  I refuse to be a victim.  I choose to carry on the journey.  With renewed vigour.  Start again.  The new dawn is the new promise.  The new promise is the alchemising mantra.

The hurts of yesterday are not just an old chapter in the present book; they belong to an old book.  This morning, I begin to write a new book.  I know that this book too will have its share of both joys and sorrows, agony and ecstasy, ennui and buoyancy. 

What transmute the good morning to a gold morning are my choices, my attitudes, and the insights that yesterdays have taught me.  “The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance,” as Arnold Bennett put it charmingly.  The good morning turns into a gold morning the moment I realise that there’s a whole day ahead of me to use it whichever way I choose.  Gold is a matter of choice even as mediocrity is.   The day is mine to convert into gold, in short.  It is there waiting for me, as perfect as it is, spotless, waiting for my hands to craft it as I wish. 

Colgate 360 Charcoal Gold
And there are certain things to start the day with, catalysing the conversion of the good into gold.  More mundane things than the alchemising attitude.  A steaming cup of green tea, for example.  What about a good tooth paste and a matching brush? 

They too matter.  In fact, this blog post has been inspired by one such morning accoutrement: Colgate 360° Charcoal Gold. 

#Colgate360GoldMornings

asks the question what is it about a morning that is great enough to alchemise it into golden.  This post is my answer.

Comments

  1. Alok singhalJanuary 23, 2016 at 6:53 PM

    Very beautifully written, mornings are always special for me since they signify a whole new day of opportunities!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 23, 2016 at 6:56 PM

      Thanks, Alok. And thanks to Colgate gift hamper for the inspiration.

      Delete
  2. navya sreeJune 3, 2022 at 9:51 PM

    This post is extremely radiant. I extremely like this post. It is outstanding amongst other posts that I’ve read in quite a while. Much obliged for this better than average post. I truly value it! ajay quest toothbrush

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af
8 comments
Read more