Joy of Spanish
A quien madruga…
Good
morning! In English we talk about mornings in singular. In Spanish,
however, they are plural, at least as far as greetings are concerned: ¡Buenos días! But
that’s not what I wanted to talk about today, at least not exactly. I
thought it would be a good opportunity to run through a few expressions
that have to do with the morning and the dawn in general.
If
a group of people are getting nervous, for example, while waiting for
something to happen, only it isn’t happening, a good expression would
be Con calma y amanecemos.
This translates vaguely into something like “Keep calm and the day will
come.” But the expression goes further than that, because the verb amanecer
in Spanish not only refers to the day itself, but also to whoever or
whatever wakes up or shows up when the dawn breaks. In other words,
there’s a good chance that when you appear at the breakfast table,
someone will ask you ¿Qué tal amaneciste?, which literally means “How did you dawn?”
If your canary isn’t singing at this point, maybe it’s because he’s sad, and you could say Amaneció triste el canario.
And if you’ve been driving all night and the sun happens to come up
when you’re pulling into Monterrey, you can affirm the following: Amanecí en Monterrey. To put it another way, in Spanish amanecer refers
to the day but also to that which lives to see the day, or arrives with
it, be that people or things. Here’s an example of a “thing.” If you
open your door in the morning and there’s a gift-wrapped box sitting on
the door mat, you’d bring it inside and show it to your wife, husband,
or children, at which point someone will say ¿Qué es eso? (“What’s that?), and you might reply No tengo la menor idea. Amaneció en la puerta (“I haven’t the foggiest idea. It just showed up at the door this morning.”)
So Con calma y amanecemos doesn’t
only mean to stay calm because the day will come. It also means to stay
calm and we will still be alive when the day comes. That makes it much
more poignant. Another good “morning” saying is No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano,
which translates into something like “The dawn won’t come any faster
just because you get up early.” In other words, sometimes you have to
abide by certain time structures that can not be hurried. Some things
can not and should not be precipitated.
On the other hand, there’s another saying that goes A quien madruga, Dios lo ayuda, meaning
that “God helps those who rise early.” Sort of like a cross between
“The early bird catches the worm” and “God helps those who help
themselves” in English. The flip side of the saying in Spanish is Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente:
The shrimp that falls asleep (or the remains asleep) is swept away by
the current. The idea is perfectly clear: if you don’t wake up — if you
don’t take an active part in life — you get passed by or left out of
the picture altogether.
So,
as Benjamin Franklin seems to have said, “Early to bed, early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Well, at least it keeps you
out of trouble. At any rate, we can recap by saying that even if you
can’t make things happen by getting up earlier than usual (no por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano), God helps those who help themselves, or those who wake up early: A quien madruga, Dios lo ayuda. But one should be patient in order to get through a difficult situation: Con calma y amanecemos.
The
verb madrugar in Spanish, especially in Mexican Spanish, has special
significance. The first meaning of madrugar is to get up early, as in No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano.
But it also means to jump the gun and get somewhere or to someone
before one’s competitors have a chance. It’s not that this meaning
doesn’t exist in Spain or the rest of Latin America (because it does),
but that it’s practically become an art form in Mexican politics: the madruguete.
Following
the logic of the early bird catching the worm, if you beat out your
competitors, les madrugas. In old Mexican politics, for example, the
President usually announced who the official (pri) candidate would be
for the next six-year period (sexenio).
But sometimes the presidenciables (the presidential hopefuls) would get
itchy and decide to announce themselves that they have already been
designated as the official candidate, hoping that the President would
take their lead, especially if the response was overwhelmingly positive.
This,
of course, could be counterproductive, and that’s why a presidential
hopeful’s political enemies sometimes floated the enemy’s name — as if
it were the enemy him or herself who was doing the floating — hoping to
fool the President into thinking that their enemy is trying to pull off
a madruguete. It’s kind of complicated but the basic idea of a madruguete is to take the enemy by surprise.
That’s why we have our last saying for today: Para uno que madruga, uno que no duerme.
“For one who rises early, one who doesn’t sleep.” This kind of levels
the playing field, because for every creep who wants to jump the gun
and get an unfair advantage, there’s somebody else just waiting for the
chance to trip him up.
But not all madrugadores
are creeps. If you have vision, you can beat out your competitors in
business and even art. It’s a matter of being able to read popular
feelings. What’s creepy about it in politics is that it’s an extremely
complicated exhibition of shadow boxing that almost no one understands
or can ever hope to, simply because most people are locked out of the
process. In this context, the madruguete makes a bad thing even worse.
Generally, however, a quien madruga, Dios lo ayuda. So finish that coffee and let’s get a move on…
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