"Breakfast is my favorite meal," a coworker told me recently, "because if I'm eating breakfast, it means I'm not working today."
It's easy to understand his sentiment, and on a certain level I agree with him, but my love for breakfast goes deeper than just having the day off. Breakfast is like your favorite aunt or uncle: you only get to see them every so often, but when you do, it's like everything is right in the world.
Breakfast is such a diverse meal, too. If you're trying to figure out what you want for lunch, that's work. It's always a negative process of elimination, too. "Nah, I had sandwiches yesterday," or "I'm not really up for Asian food." Not so with breakfast. Breakfast is about options. It's always "Whaddaya want for breakfast? I got eggs, juice, biscuits... you name it." If it qualifies as a breakfast food, there's no reason not to have it. In fact, you can even combine your breakfast food WITH OTHER BREAKFAST FOODS. You feel like having pancakes and a bowl of oatmeal? Go for it. Bacon and toast? Nobody here to stop you. You could even have pancakes, oatmeal, bacon AND toast and the only thing anybody would say to you is "Man, that's a big breakfast."
Come to think of it, when's the last time you were denied a substitution during breakfast? Want a soda instead of coffee? Sure, we can do that. Hashbrowns instead of fruit? Fruit instead of hashbrowns? Extra bacon instead of hashbrowns or fruit? Comin' right up, boss.
That would never work with lunch. Imagine all the stares and sideways looks you'd get ordering hamburgers at a pizza restaurant. No way.
Not with breakfast, though. Breakfast is so awesome, most places won't even serve it past 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. And the places who do? Man, those are like the radical, free-thinking weirdos of the restaurant community. They've always got those dudes with the lip-rings and the dreadlocks and the chicks with a bunch of tattoos working there. It's like walking into a biker-bar, but with waffles.
I think my favorite thing about breakfast is how much work is involved with the payoff being that you get to eat your favorite thing at the end of it. You don't just throw something together for breakfast and get on with your day... breakfast is something that one must make, and it is not so much eaten as savored. And don't try to act like warming up a Pop-Tart or pouring a bowl of cereal is the same as making breakfast. It's not the same thing. That's breakfast for chumps. I'm talking about using skillets and cutting boards and spatulas. I'm talking about preheating ovens and using good cooking oil and fresh vegetables. I'm talking about setting the table and putting the coffee on. THAT, my friends, is breakfast.
And that takes time.
And it costs money.
And it makes a huge mess.
And you spend at least as much time cleaning up after yourself as you did making it in the first place.
But all the best things in life are like that, aren't they? All the good parties I've thrown, every project I've finished, every time I go for a 15+ mile bike ride, there's always this moment when it's all over where I just lay down on the floor in utter exhaustion and think, "Wow... that just happened... I just did that," and I marvel that God loves me enough to put the world together in such a way as to let me experience some of the best parts of it.
I've said it before and I'll re-state it here: we were made to do great and incredible things. We were built to experience life in a radical and fulfilling way. And I've just spent the better part of an hour soliloquizing my egg and mushroom tacos, and that probably makes me crazy, but when's the last time you got that excited over breakfast? When's the last time you got that excited over anything? Where does joy come from in your life and how often do you take time to revel in it? How many times today have you taken a moment to think about where you are and what you're doing and what an incredible word it speaks to the blessings and the triumph that your life is? That it could be? Have you told anybody how much they mean to you lately? Have you sought to share the things that give your life meaning? Do you even notice the tiny miracles that happen all around you or are you too busy moving on to the next thing on your to-do list?
...and I'm one who's crazy?
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