Soubhiye

Photo by Sandra Kaas on Unsplash

When I was a little girl, I used to wake up early in my suburban bedroom with its avocado green and harvest gold color scheme, make my bed, and quietly slip outside to feed the birds. I’d get a few pieces of bread from the kitchen, crumble them up, go outside, and begin tossing crumbs into the street. I would stand in the cool, empty early morning street in my little plaid pants, communing with a flock of crows flapping and cackling at my feet.  

I’ve always loved the early morning. Those first quiet hours are sacred time—time to finish my dreams and linger in that liminal, semi-conscious state between two worlds. 

I often think the dream state is more real than our waking life—all those rich, mysterious images and stories communicating wisdom from the psyche. I want to hold my dreams in my consciousness when I wake up. If I write fast enough, I can sometimes capture them.

I don’t like noise, bright lights, rushing around, or even talking first thing in the morning. I like to watch the crows crossing the sky as the light rises and the sunlight creeps down the hillside across the lake. I like the sound of the soft rush of cars passing by outside. I like to linger in that powerful creative and spiritual space.

I had years of mornings that were like being shot out of a cannon.  Now I like to ease into my day, savoring thick coffee and waking up slowly.

So when I learned the word soubhiye, I learned a word that perfectly describes my morning ritual. It’s a Lebanese Arabic word for that quiet time in the morning when no one else is awake and you have time to yourself.

There’s no direct translation for soubhiye in English. I think of it as silence and solitude in the morning, but I’ve also seen it described as quietly relaxing and chatting with friends or family over coffee. Either way, it’s about starting your day slowly, calmly, intentionally.

I love the fact that certain words and phrases in some languages don’t have an equivalent in other languages. In our productivity-obsessed, life-hacking culture, there’s an entire body of literature exhorting us to jump-start our days with a “morning routine”: Drink hot lemon water! Meditate! Journal! Exercise!

But there’s no equivalent for soubhiye that I know of. 

Language is a reflection of cultural values. Our caffeinated culture is about action and productivity. We live and work full speed ahead from morning to night—coffee to go, rushing into the day, phones buzzing with news and texts and emails (although I do think the pandemic changed this to an extent as more people started evaluating the quality of their daily lives and making other choices).

No one is encouraging us to observe soubhiye. Instead, we’re barraged with advice about how to “hack” our mornings with productive habits and routines.

Soubhiye is a word that means the opposite of all that.  It’s an art and a practice. It’s for unhurried contemplation and reflection in that pristine space before our minds get cluttered with to-do’s and deadlines and everything else competing for our fragmented time and attention.

Now I have a name for my morning daydreaming: Soubhiye.