In the daily living of life, there exists a parallel universe. Two trains running on opposite tracks, tracks that will never intersect, carrying passengers that will never meet. On these dual planes, human existence is as different as, well day and night, to the point that the passengers on one train cannot intellectually understand or even recognize the passengers on the other train.

It’s a parallel universe, two separate time-and-space continuums. Each is alien to the other. We know these two paths, these two directions, these two distinct life trajectories by the people we meet – they are typically labeled morning people and night people.

You board one of these two trains when you’re very small and you never get to disembark. One falls asleep as soon as his butt hits the car seat or in the middle of dinner, the other sneaks out of bed at 2AM and watches the family room TV while hiding on the stairs.

Morning people want to be the first ones up, the first in line, they don’t want to miss anything … and they’re willing to go to sleep at 6:30PM to make it so. Night people don’t become functionally awake and fully calibrated until 1:30PM and they have no qualms about hanging out until well after midnight to catch-up with the day they only half remember.

Morning people are planners, night people are fly-by-the-seat-of-their pantsers. For morning people, their basic human vibration is controlled by the sun, for night people, their essence is energized by the moon. People that live most of their lives in the daylight are caffeine and combed hair, people that come out at night are an untucked shirt and a Bloody Mary. Morning dude owns an umbrella and dresses in layers, moon boy is typically surprised by the weather because conversations about such things are done during the day and he doesn’t usually do days.

Night people will always be late for any activity that happens around noon, but will be idling at full throttle for a football game that kicks off at 7PM. Morning people can be on the road at 4:30AM but will fall asleep during a championship game if it spills over into the evening hours.

Morning people get excited about sunrises, night people get stoked about tequila sunrises. Night people can be super flexible, they go with the flow and change plans, careers and genders on the spur of the moment. Morning people resist change, if it hasn’t been scheduled in their Daytimer for thirty days it isn’t happening.

Night guy thinks daytime guy is a square. Morning guy thinks night guy is an irresponsible child. Morning people are best being in charge of the financial ledger, night people are best in charge of the social calendar. Morning guy is likely to have a cup of green tea and a scone upon rising, while night guy leans toward Redbull and a cigarette.

The people who live mostly in the daylight literally pass out after a few hours of darkness. Night people usually don’t think about sleeping, they sleep when they get around to it and sometimes it has to be suggested before they actually remember that sleeping is a thing.

Sun dude accepts that life is based on rules and rhythms, the sun rises, the sun sets, and body clocks and human nature and basic sanity dictate that a person follows the natural universe. Moon boy lives life counterclockwise, he oscillates at a different frequency either because he was dropped on his head when he was small or because he believes the rules only apply if you give the rules power.

Born at opposite poles, night person thinks morning person should hit the dimmer switch, morning person wants night person to step into the light. People are often as different as day and night.

Photo credit: Nick Kenrick.. on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA