What’s Really Important

Do you know what I’m grateful for every single day? You could practically set your clock to it… Which is why I rarely need an alarm anymore. But that’s not what I’m so grateful for. It’s something much more important.

I hardly need an alarm because my body wakes me up every morning. Now you might be thinking: What’s so special about that?

Maybe you don’t think it’s all that special right now, and I’m sure plenty of people would agree with you. But… every morning, I’m genuinely grateful to discover that my digestive system is still working properly. And in this case, I’m specifically talking about the exit end of the digestive system. The intake end, to be honest, doesn’t work quite as well for me, but that’s a different story. No, what I want to talk about here is my gratitude for everything moving along the way it should.

As I said, I can almost set my clock by it. For periods of time, I’ll wake up around 5, 6, or 7 a.m. Sometimes around 8, but those periods are less common; they tend to be the times when I’m not feeling quite myself. Whether I wake up at 5, 6, or 7 depends on what time I go to bed. There are periods when I start craving my bed as early as 7 p.m. Then I’ll stay up until around 8 so that my body won’t wake me up too early the next morning.

At least, that’s what I say so confidently, but actually, I’m not entirely sure: was I already starting to wake up, and did my peristalsis kick in in response? Or did my peristalsis get going first and wake me up? I really don’t know. But what I do know is that every morning I’m genuinely delighted by how well my system is still doing its job.

At my age, I’m increasingly less inclined to take these things for granted. And I’m also grateful for how healthy everything looks afterward, when I flush it away. I think I owe that particular feature to two of my daily habits: eating fiber and eating yogurt.

Because you really can tell, you know, how healthy what you leave behind is. Have you ever heard of the Bristol Stool Chart? It was developed in the late 1990s by researchers at the University of Bristol. They created a scale with seven different types. I’m not going to describe them all here; if you click this link, you’ll see what I mean. Type 4 is roughly what you want to see. (By the way, I have nothing to do with the products recommended here. I just thought this explanation and illustration were clear.)

When I wake up in the morning, I always give my body a little extra time to get everything “fully ready to go.” Only when I feel, Okay, this is it, my body is ready, now I can go to the bathroom—that’s when I get out of bed.

And what’s striking is that at that point, I really do feel awake. When I leave the bathroom afterward, I feel light. And that is a perfect way to start the day! I’m genuinely grateful for it.

And very often, it makes me think of an anecdote from my workplace nearly thirty years ago. I worked for a nonprofit organization where the policy officer had quite a hard time distinguishing between what was important and what wasn’t. As a result, she thought EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS IMPORTANT. That often got on our nerves.

One day, the director had finally had enough. She lost her temper and—slightly unprofessionally—shouted, 

“You know what’s important? Whether you’ve had a good shit. That’s what’s important!”

I laughed really hard at the time, especially because I never would have expected a director to say something like that. But only in recent years have I begun to realize just how profound that statement actually was. Because, indeed, that is important!

Unlike many of my other posts, I’m not going to end this one by asking, “And you—how’s that going for you?”

I would find that incredibly intrusive myself if someone asked me that question. But if you’d nevertheless like to respond, you’re very welcome to. Just keep in mind that not everyone has a strong stomach.

By the way, since I mentioned my sleep pattern earlier, here’s a little trick that might help you stay asleep—and this one might help you fall asleep.

Photo: Phil Hearing