The Waking Hours

In a flash your eyes open in a sharp, fluid motion. The room is dark except for the moonlight pouring through a window. Somewhere in the distance you can hear various calls to prayer. In a foreign language they echo across the night gently pulsating inside the cavern of your head. Coaxing you to pay closer attention to not that what you can’t understand, but to what you already know to be true. You sit up puzzled with the amount of energy you find reverberating in the dim. Coming to your feet you spy the moon, framed through the window pane, bearing witness to creation.   

The benefits of jet lag are these solitary moments. While the whole world around you sleeps, you are free to sit down with your muse. Sure, your mind is enveloped in a thick fog that shrouds your thoughts in that what feels surreal. A bit confused, your circadian rhythm is desperately trying to place itself. Is it time to wake up or go back to sleep? Is it time for dinner or rather breakfast?

In the waking hours you face yourself head on. All distractions dissipate in the darkness. And here you can take inventory of your ongoing battles and self-created enemies. In the perfectly-still silence you exhale your inspiration: for all the things you know are yet to be achieved. For the knowledge that the struggle will continue.

Wide awake you are free to dream. Nothing stirs and so there is nothing to dissuade you in these dangerous instances of self-assurance. The deeper you dive the clearer the revelation becomes, crystallizing in the film behind your eyelids. These aren’t grand visions – rather a list of what is to be done.  

These dreams:

                Of self-awareness
                                and less addiction;

                Of improved practice
                                and healthy breakfasts;

    Of colorful stories
                                and leafy gardens;

                Of realizing the fruits of love
                                and building the tribe that follows

You have never been so sure that they will come true. And when it all comes to pass it will be because of these moments. If you dare dream.