KOCHI: When you wake up in the morning, do you find yourself taking some time to orient yourself to the world around you?
A good majority of us, even those with multiple alarms set up within minutes to ensure they don’t fall back asleep, spend a few minutes more in bed before we start the day. Sometimes, it is about just wanting to crawl back into the relaxed sense of deep sleep, and at other times, we might be trying hard to hold on to the quickly dissipating mists of sweet dreams, or even scary nightmares, before they disappear in the wake of day.
We might take some time to stretch and breathe, getting used to our body again, and if we are over forty, trying to get our muscles and joints moving again. For many of us, all this lasts very few seconds before the alertness comes rushing in and we jump out of bed towards the endless list of things to be done.
That little time between being fully awake and fully asleep is so fleeting. The question is: How often and how much of that time do you spend feeling love, thinking of your partners and connecting with them?
When you do have the privilege and good fortune to go to sleep with and wake up with someone you love, the last thing you do before going to sleep and the first thing you do when you wake is to reach out for a hug or a cuddle, or any little moment of connection; it feels truly good. That intimacy is special but we often take it for granted.
As relationships get into a longer-term territory of cohabitation, people often drift into their routines. One wakes up earlier, the other wants to watch TV late into the night, there are household duties that make one of them necessarily get up an hour earlier, work demands time away — we end up sacrificing the easy intimacy of waking up together, feeling loving thoughts. It is worse if we are living on our own, sleeping alone.
We start to forget loving when we wake up. We wake up and get ready to be busy, whatever the busyness might be about. Unless you are literally in love with your work, want to work 70-80 hours a week and get sad if the working week is made five days a week instead of six, if anyone asks you what is the most important thing in your life is you are not likely to name your busy-ness but who you love. When that is so, why not take a moment to love in the morning? As much as we stretch out our limbs, why not stretch out our feelings of love as well?
Take a minute every morning to be kind to yourself and everyone around you. You are likely to have a better day.
(The writer’s views are personal)