It’s early evening, lengthened by the inky, sooty dark of winter. What has happened to this day? A day that goes like every other day, and the days after that.
I’m tired. Not as in “I’m so sick and tired” (though, in a way, I guess that may be true, too). But tired. Like, I want to go to bed right now sort of tired. Is it the early dark? COVID-Somnia, bound in tormented seclusion? The waiting?
The waiting. For what exactly? That one day the morning news will wake us with the announcement that we can go back to the time before our lives were upended? That the past two years was just a bad dream, a blimp in the earth’s timeline, a test?
Falling asleep is not the problem. It’s the middle of the night wake-ups. Why can’t I sleep through the night? And while we’re at it, what on earth is happening to my hair?!
Should I read? Put socks into pairs? Make a grilled cheese sandwich? Or run through every boneheaded relationship I have made over the last seventy-two decades, which some might call “disturbing to others.”
Now here’s the real kick in the pajama bottoms: the circadian rhythm front. My extensive 3 AM research tells me that as we age, it is “normal” that as we get older, we don’t sleep as long or sleep through the night without waking. Not encouraging.
Yea, the clock is ticking, literally, and sticking my head in the sheets is not an option.
I am good friends with my bed. I do my best work in bed, and I mean that in the warmest way. But I prefer if not being between the hours of 2 AM and 5. But there it is, and yes, that is exactly the time it is right now. (I also can hear you mutter -“my best work?”)
And yes, I know, my research also told me that you should only be using the bed for sleep and another fun activity that has a useful sedative effect.
Believe me, I lay awake at night thinking about this.
But this eternal waiting…
I walk, wandering around like a lost specter. It’s easy to feel discombobulated in the ubiquitous and now undramatic term “social distancing”. This now new routine social distancing and self-isolation has robbed us of our agency, and is starting to feel like little more than inconvenience giving others wide berth, but walking is as close to a magic pill that I have. It’s given me time to reflect on my life choices, and the rest, of my life. You know what they say about exercise and endorphins and not shooting your partner.
We have discovered that we are on extended city breaks, very extended – in our own postal codes, trading plane tickets and travel pamphlets for I-Pages and pedestrianism as our primary means of seeing the world and thinking about what’s in it.
Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first 20 years and the remainder was just reflection. Again, not encouraging.
Maybe it’s hope we need the most now, especially when we aren’t feeling especially hopeful. Desmond Tutu said that if we are devoid of hope, we should then just then roll over and disappear quietly, as hope says things can, and that things will, be better.
Hope is vital for fulfillment and our well-being. To have something to look forward to when you wake up, to have a project you love doing, to have someone that really listens to you.
And to find beauty. Not beauty in Hollywood glamorous, but as a calling. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming, says the late Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, “in that sense, is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.”
All in all, I guess we need to give ourselves some credit. Even a small step forward is a step in the right direction. Hey, even just standing still is still standing.
Although 3 AM in bed is perhaps not the optimal moment of which to derive a true picture of reality.
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