Early to bed and early to rise
Makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise.
I tried to follow this pretty assiduously as a kid. But cut to Engineering college (and the infinite wisdom that comes with teenage years) and I found this hard to digest. I mean, my friends and I used to be up all night chatting, partying and generally enjoying life. In fact, our hostel used to come alive after midnight. We had heated discussions about cricket, politics (inter-group, college level, regional, national, international, and everything in between), girls, sex, movies (not in this order) – basically everything under the sun except studies and course work. Playing under-arm cricket in the hostel lobby at 2 am wasn’t uncommon. So I slept at about 3-4 am and got up at 10-10:30 am on a good day to make it to class. The more I thought about my lifestyle, the less this adage made sense to me. The basic flaw in the above saying is the underlying assumption that by rising early you get time to exercise, study and make excellent financial decisions like 401K, social security and investing in Enron. What if I wake up at 5am every morning and spend my time eating junk and playing solitaire? Come to think of it, isn’t the world designed for the late-nighters? Why do we end up chatting and debating in the middle of the night? Never once have I heard of an impromptu fruitful (read meaningless) discussion at 5am in the morning. Why do we make always plans for Friday/Saturday nights? I haven’t heard anyone say – “Let’s meet up and paint the town red this Saturday morning. 7 am good for you?” Last time I checked, we had ‘night’-clubs, not a single ‘day club’ in the yellow pages. Restaurants have hoardings screaming “open late.” All the games are scheduled in the evenings. Most of the tv channels play all night but try switching the tv on in the morning and all you have is Chuck Norris promoting a miracle machine that will miraculously make you muscular and fit - all for the small matter of a gazillion payments of $29.99 per month.
Conclusion: The wise old man who wrote this adage didn’t come from a big city with night-life and I am sure had no social life whatsoever.
Conclusion – 2: Even with my nocturnal lifestyle, I am pretty healthy (touchwood). Wealth? Ah, it is such a relative term. And as far as wisdom is concerned, astute readers can make their own judgments based on the smart conclusion drawn above.
