The Secret Truths of Morning Larks
Kimberly Leslie

     No, you’re not dreaming, I promise you. If you can read this pretty clearly, I can guarantee you’re plenty awake. Yes, I’m a morning person while being a part of a demographic known for their night owl tendencies: a fulltime college student. I generally wake up somewhere between five AM and six AM, occasionally sleeping in until six-thirty AM, and I collapse for the night within the nine o’clock hour. Sometimes, I’ll fall asleep before nine PM like an elementary schooler, and once in a blood moon, I’ll survive to ten PM.  

     Morning people, or otherwise known as morning larks, are everyone’s envy and capitalism’s goalpost. From YouTube videos where young adults chronicle their experiments with larkhood to articles detailing how to become a morning person, it’s safe to say that they’re well-liked, so well-liked that society has adopted their schedule virtually everywhere and deemed them the pinnacle of health and productivity. Most school districts, particularly middle and high schools, have the audacity to start their days before eight AM, forcing hordes of night-loving adolescents to drag their sleep-addled selves out of their cozy sheets at six or seven AM, or sometimes even earlier than that if they’re riding the bus, and skip breakfast daily. Most traditional offices follow a nine-to-five schedule, which may not sound too bad before you consider the long commutes through cramped interstates. Then you’ve got a similar situation to K-12 schools, only instead of sleep-deprived adolescents, you have interstates crammed with sleep-deprived adults running on coffee and panic.  

     But the real question that not enough people ask is: should you really be going for the morning bird lifestyle? Is being a morning bird the solution to all your problems and woes? As a morning lark myself, I won’t deny that it has its perks, but it’s also not your ticket to success and wealth, despite what the billionaires waking up at the unholy hour of three AM might tell you. 

     However, I do have to say that not needing an alarm is a pretty sweet benefit. I have never, in my life, had to set an alarm. No, I don’t count the times when my parents had to yell from the hallway back in sixth grade where I went to a middle school, fifteen minutes away from me, that started at 7:25AM. Those days, where I struggled to adjust to middle-school’s fast-paced mornings and the many days of frantically stuffing my folders, notebooks, and binders in my bag as I raced out the door with my mom, were the exception. Once I managed to learn my daily routine, my parents never had to wake me up for most of middle school and all of high school. I had been sufficiently trained by societal expectations that every person should be working producing before eight.  

     For me, alarm clocks are just pretty decorations. I’ve never known the sound of a song or a loud buzz demanding me to open my eyes and scramble out of my bed. In my room, I have a petite shiny blue clock with a green screen displaying the time. It can be used as an alarm, but I’ve never used it for that.  

     To be honest, it’s probably for the best that I don’t depend on one. Setting an alarm would do a far better job of waking my parents and my little sister on the second and third floor, respectively, than me. I sleep through virtually everything: thunderstorms, my little sister’s cell phone conversations, football, and three of my family’s four dogs tramping down the stairs with my bleary-eyed mom for a bathroom trip. The only thing that can drag me out of my sleep is the weather radio blaring in my parents’ room, and even then, sometimes they’ll have to rouse me from my slumber.  

     And besides, is it really natural to follow the wake-up time society has deemed best and follow the whims of an alarm clock instead of your own body? I’ll admit I’m in a privileged position because of my larkhood. However, my original wake-up time back when I was in elementary school was anywhere between six o’clock and six-thirty, and to most institutions, that’s sleeping in. Why have a reasonable schedule and breakfast when you can get started earlier and cram more things to do in your day? The alarm clock may be incredibly convenient for helping maintain a morning lark schedule, but it doesn’t know if you’ve been sick or emotionally stressed or injured. And if your alarm clock is your phone, that shiny square can tempt you to just scroll the hours away while your body rots in bed instead of actually living. Whereas with your body’s circadian rhythm and natural clock, it knows your needs. It may not understand that the morning-loving world needs your body, whether in sickness or health, to produce money or things, but it damn well understands when you thrive and when you need more rest. 

     So what do I wake up to if it’s not my phone ringing or an alarm clock buzzing? It’s either one of the five cats that reside in my room or the sun streaming in from at least one of my three windows. The sunrise truly is a lovely thing to wake up to in the spring and the summer. All those golds and oranges and pinks and blues are just so joyful. The sunlight streaming in warms my face and is better than any cup of coffee in that it doesn’t make me jittery and hyper. It also adds a golden slow to my room, which pairs nicely with my carnation pink walls and gray-biege dressers.  

     The sunlight isn’t the only pleasant part of my early morning view, though. I live just outside of my local small town and close enough to nature that I have trees, at minimum, as tall as my three story house and a pond just a short golf-cart down my gravel driveway and through a weedy grassy area not confined by fenceposts, which I can view through my two south-facing windows. My driveway is surrounded by two neat columns of different trees: on the left, oak trees with poison ivy sprawling up the trunk and on the right, pine trees where the barn cats will sometimes crawl under. In the morning, they’ll stand stark black against the marigold and blue sky when the sun is just starting to come up, and then when the sun is higher up, they bask in warm yellows and oranges that make them shimmer like emeralds. 

     With a bedroom view like that, how could I honestly enjoy rushing a morning in pursuit of punctuality and productivity? Whoever said that morning larks are more productive and like to work as soon as the sun peeks above the horizon is lying. I’m a lazy morning lark. I may like to wake up at the first peek of dawn, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy rushing out the door for morning college classes at least an hour early to compensate for my thirty minute commute and have a fighting chance at finding decent parking.  

      My ideal morning looks like this: I wake up and I lay in my bed or my lounge chair, contemplating life and the sunrise for some minutes. Usually, I’ll have at least one cat curled up on my bed. Nothing is better than having a purring little ball that loves you unconditionally curled up by your side. If Star, a petite black and gray tortoiseshell cat who has claimed me as her person, is there, it’s not uncommon for her to physically greet me by shoving her face in front of mine and breathing in my essence. She has even greeted me by tapping one of my eyes with her dainty paw. Even if she’s far from subtle and even if she’s occasionally scratched my nose or ear in glomming onto me, it’s very cozy to have her tiny, furry body on top of my chest. Her burying her head into my neck or body is the purest form of love there is; to her, I’m a blanket she can furrow herself in.  

     If I’m feeling unusually productive, I’ll even get dressed or hang up clothes in my closet. Then I’ll head downstairs,  mingle with my mom and dad, either on our living room couch or at the countertop in the kitchen, and eat a light breakfast. Then I’ll futz around a bit on my phone, peeking at Goodreads and Discord for status updates and reading people’s comments on the internet. If I’ve got the energy and motivation and I really want to have an amazing morning, I’ll do something creative like write or draw. Sometimes, I’ll open my day with some light reading or a jigsaw puzzle if I have one in progress. All of this, although usually not all at once, takes place before eight or nine AM, which is when I start my college work in a similar tradition to my parents starting their work at around seven AM. Yes, even on the weekends. I really am my parents’ daughter in some ways, although in all honesty, I am a tinge lazier in that I start later, but I’ve found that to be more beneficial productivity-wise.

     While morning larks may appear to be more productive in their earlier start, that doesn’t mean that energy lasts the whole day. Morning larks are like introverts in that they’re wired like batteries. Whether it’s social interaction or the hours of the day, introverts and larks start out refreshed from solitude and the morning sun respectively, and then they lose more energy the more they socialize or the longer the day stretches on. In other words, morning larks basically become more incompetent as the hours widdle away (perhaps that’s why night owls are said to be more intelligent since they experience the inverse effect—starting out slow early and peaking at the day’s end when the sun falls). 

     I’m at my clearest and sharpest in the morning, which makes it ideal for cranking out essays or mowing through readings. However, starting in the mid-afternoon, I begin to slump in cognition. Especially if I’ve had a long day or have had to do a lot of peopling, I’ll get the most pounding headaches or feel numb in my limbs. This is usually when I’ll fight to keep my eyes open and want nothing more than to collapse on my couch in a haze.  

     By nightfall, forget about me being a functioning human being. I can usually make it to seven, eight is questionable, but nine and later, I’m about as useful as someone who’s had several shots of alcohol. Late afternoon classes are survivable, but night classes? Between the thirty minute commute home I would have taken in the dark while half-asleep and their hours potentially extending to nine or later, no thank you. Night classes to morning larks are what eight AM classes are to night owls.  

     Being a morning lark is often touted as this wondrous lifestyle that will cure your depression, anxiety, and any other mental ailments you can think of. Study after study claims that morning larks are inherently happier people. On one hand, I can kind of see it. Sunlight is an excellent source of dopamine, and with sunshine, there’s smiles and laughter. Spring and summer have more sunshine, and people generally love those more than the colder seasons, especially the maligned winter.  

     However, if being of the lark chronotype is supposed to inoculate me against mental illness, then that has failed miserably. I am a morning person, and I have also struggled with anxiety. As a high school senior, I woke up early of my own volition, yet I was in one of the darkest mental places of my life between COVID-19 induced isolation, the constant school switching every year, and spending two of my high school years in heavily Christian schools as a nonreligious outsider. I was so anxious that I virtually never spoke to anyone outside of class in my senior year and gave most of my speeches for my public speaking class to my teacher, Mrs. Sunday. I may thrive in the morning, but that does not change the fact that I panic over social interactions (although it’s improved, not due to loving the morning, but because of therapy and friendship).  

     My best friend Anxiety sure hasn’t cared that I’m a morning lark and crave early morning sunshine. What good would being a morning lark do for social anxiety? She just harasses me during the day about all my mistakes in social interactions and how annoying and burdensome I am; when I’m too exhausted to function or think clearly at night, then she leaves temporarily.  

     Having a love for the morning also can’t protect you from emotional hurt or trauma. At best, it’s a temporary oasis. During a turbulent period in my family life, the early morning sun rays and the golden hue the world takes in those early light hours were a balm. Since everything was so quiet and still, I could forget the fracture in a once-close familial relationship because of another relative’s foul play and manipulation (don’t worry, it’s repaired now). I could almost pretend we were still close, still like best friends. However, that peace—the birds’ innocent chirping, the world’s joyful glow—only lasted for so many hours. I could explain why being a morning person didn’t protect me from toxic relatives outside my household and the resulting fallout, but, you know, I’d rather not dissect one of my biggest wounds for entertainment and cry at my computer the whole time. So I’ll finish this little shadow in my sunny essay with this, and this goes for any lifestyle decision deemed mentally beneficial: being a morning person won’t fix your mental health because waking up earlier ultimately won’t solve the problems causing you to hurt in the first place.  

     Similarly, larkhood is often hailed as the solution to all your sleeping troubles. If only you’d go to bed just a few hours earlier, you’d be able to obtain the Holy Grail of sleep, or so goes the common wisdom larks like to spring on night owls. Of course night owls would struggle with their sleep in a society that favors morning larks’ circadian rhythm. They're chronically sleep-deprived five days a week and spend their weekends trying to repay their sleep debt. There’s no definitive proof that night owls have unhealthy sleep schedules because they’re forced to live outside of their natural schedules. 

     Similar to how being a morning person won’t protect you from mental health struggles, it also isn’t a cure for sleep troubles. One sleeping problem unique to morning larks, from my experience, is the inability to sleep in. Not only can I wake up as early as five thirty or six in the morning without an alarm, I perk up without any coffee or other stimulants as soon as I open my eyes. While this is useful for classes or work, that’s about where its use ends. It’s not so useful when I wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I’ll have good luck and return to sleep relatively quickly. However, if I’m thirsty or suffering from stomach issues, then I’ll usually be awake for a while, and I’ll still wake up at my usual scheduled time because of how my body is wired. 

     If I do miraculously sleep in after six-thirty, it’s usually because I’m feeling so unwell that my internal clock is malfunctioning. In an odd sense, this is a blessing because I’m not forced to disregard my body’s needs in a morning-loving, workaholic society. Generally if this happens, then I don’t fight it, and if I have an early morning class, I don’t frantically hurry out the door with a granola bar in my mouth and my bags loosely hanging off my arms. Instead, I’ll stay home and email my professor.  

     Finally, larkhood doesn’t really benefit your social life. This goes double if you’re a college student or part of any community that really loves the stars and moon. As a college student, I may as well live in a different time zone from across the world than my friends and peers. I’ll either sleep through entire conversations and sagas occurring late at night or I’ll be itching to text my friends something at seven or eight AM before realizing they’re probably not awake yet. Yes, I will scrunch my brows at you if you tell me, unironically, that eight AM is way too early in the morning. What do you mean that eight’s too early? The sun’s up by then in all seasons, and in the warmer seasons, it’s been up for at least a couple hours. But, to be fair, any night owl would react the same way if I told them that nine PM was way too late to do much of anything.  

     Despite what society may say about larkhood being the best chronotype, there’s no real proof that larkhood is inherently superior. Ultimately, the idolization of larkhood is based on a need for more money and more bodies to produce it. Demands for money and produce don’t always consider the diversity of human biology, both good and bad. For all the culture clashes between morning larks and night owls, neither are that different in the end. One just thrives in the morning while the other thrives in the night; they both have the same capacity for innovation, brilliance, and health. Morning larkhood is not some superfood, nor is night owlhood junk food.  At the end of the day and night, they’re just chronotypes.