What’s Your “Bed”?

Graduation speeches, man. Even into October, they just keep on giving.

Early last summer, one such address delivered at the University of Texas by U.S. Navy Administrator William H. McRaven went viral. In it, the commander who orchestrated the raid that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden provided one very definitive and streamlined piece of advice: make your bed every morning.

He said:

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

It’s a bright concept, the theory is strong and ideally speaking, the bones of the request — to make your bed in order to achieve diligence and the satisfaction that comes with having completed a task, no matter how remedial — are conceivably right. 

For some people, though, making the bed is simply a therapeutic pleasure. My mother, for example,  got upset at me one time for tidying my own bed because it meant that she wouldn’t have the opportunity to flatten my sheets or fluff an extra set of pillows. Her issues extend far beyond a compulsive proclivity for self-constructed tidiness, but that’s a story for another time.

For other people, the completion of a domestic task will do nothing at all for their respective senses of unilateral accomplishment. I happen to really like coming home to a day-old, unmade bed so that I can crawl back in and feel the wrinkled sheets become one with my toes. It is so cozy. Still, though, I get it — I get what Commander McRaven is saying. Everyone has their bed and to overcome the hurdle of making it can and will inform the events of the rest of their days, which become weeks, which become months and eventually, too, lives. It’s just, what is your bed?

For me, it’s exercise. I hate doing it and as a result, most days I don’t want to.When I say I’ll work out but I don’t, the world remains an unfathomable sphere that enjoys propping itself up on my puny shoulders and seems to have found adhesive glue that disables it from being removed, no matter how hard I pull.

But when I do get it done, I feel fucking great. Like I have just lifted this world from off my shoulders to find that the sphere is merely the size of a basketball. As a result, I resolve to bounce this ball and for the duration of the day, shoot it into hoops that I am certain will go through the net swiftly.

Even if they don’t.

Know what I mean?

One more time — what’s your bed? Make it.