The Very Best of Times: Your sleep gets disturbed in the night, you fumble around for the water on the nightstand and mull over looking at the clock, fearing that it is close to the time to get up and your sleep is nowhere complete. Finally, after some deliberation, you are not able to resist looking at the clock (I kept wondering about the time the one time I forced myself NOT to look at the time) and you see that you still have an hour of sleep left until the alarm wakes you up at 5.30. You can go back to sleep thankfully.
The Worst of Times: Same scenario, only difference being that you only have 15-30 min left, which is too less to fall back to sleep, get in some significant snooze time before the alarm starts blaring (actually mine is a melody but still it does seem to blare first thing in the morning).
Tail Piece - How many times have I used the word time in this post?
Another tail piece - From standards 8 to 10, I studied in the steel township of Durgapur, while I lived with my uncle's family in a small coal mining village town, around 30 kms away. We had a school bus which picked up all the students in our area studying in the various schools in Durgapur. The picking and dropping consumed a lot of time since the area covered was quite significant. This was specially the case while returning because some schools broke up late and we had to wait for them. Unfortunately for me, we lived at the end of the route since the group of collieries my uncle managed was at the further corner of the area (the area was divided into collieries, depending on the size of the mines and coal deposits). So, the bus would come pick me up at 5.30am and I would reach home by 3.30pm. And I never felt sorry for myself, even one single day. I would get up while the whole house was sleeping and nobody would even hear the door click shut when I left. But now, every day I get up and see my husband sleeping while I am running around getting ready silently, I feel sorry for myself. I feel bad that he is not pushing for us to move closer to the office so that I can work normal hours.
I find this really interesting as an example of the impact of knowledge and awareness. I lost my mom when I was six and I was used to taking care of myself. My dad retired when I was 8 years old and we lost all the privileges of a government job (car, maids, gardener, cook, driver, watchman - the whole works). I had never observed how my friends were being pampered at home, how they did not have a fraction of the chores or even a tinier fraction of the pressure to study hard and do well in each and every exam because that was the only way out. Since we did not have the current security, we very much understood the importance of a secure future while my peers obliviously basked in the safety and warmth of a typical family. Basically, I was unaware of where my life measured on the scale of how lives in my demography could be. Now, when I am very much self sufficient, capable of getting up in the morning (and 5.30 is not that early), healthy enough to make the drive, do not have the pressure to make every hour count towards fruitful study, do not have the pressure of cooking food every night and, above all, getting well paid for my efforts - NOW I have a problem with my schedule. Just because I know what it is to have an easy life. Such is our thankfulness for what God gives us!
The Worst of Times: Same scenario, only difference being that you only have 15-30 min left, which is too less to fall back to sleep, get in some significant snooze time before the alarm starts blaring (actually mine is a melody but still it does seem to blare first thing in the morning).
Tail Piece - How many times have I used the word time in this post?
Another tail piece - From standards 8 to 10, I studied in the steel township of Durgapur, while I lived with my uncle's family in a small coal mining village town, around 30 kms away. We had a school bus which picked up all the students in our area studying in the various schools in Durgapur. The picking and dropping consumed a lot of time since the area covered was quite significant. This was specially the case while returning because some schools broke up late and we had to wait for them. Unfortunately for me, we lived at the end of the route since the group of collieries my uncle managed was at the further corner of the area (the area was divided into collieries, depending on the size of the mines and coal deposits). So, the bus would come pick me up at 5.30am and I would reach home by 3.30pm. And I never felt sorry for myself, even one single day. I would get up while the whole house was sleeping and nobody would even hear the door click shut when I left. But now, every day I get up and see my husband sleeping while I am running around getting ready silently, I feel sorry for myself. I feel bad that he is not pushing for us to move closer to the office so that I can work normal hours.
I find this really interesting as an example of the impact of knowledge and awareness. I lost my mom when I was six and I was used to taking care of myself. My dad retired when I was 8 years old and we lost all the privileges of a government job (car, maids, gardener, cook, driver, watchman - the whole works). I had never observed how my friends were being pampered at home, how they did not have a fraction of the chores or even a tinier fraction of the pressure to study hard and do well in each and every exam because that was the only way out. Since we did not have the current security, we very much understood the importance of a secure future while my peers obliviously basked in the safety and warmth of a typical family. Basically, I was unaware of where my life measured on the scale of how lives in my demography could be. Now, when I am very much self sufficient, capable of getting up in the morning (and 5.30 is not that early), healthy enough to make the drive, do not have the pressure to make every hour count towards fruitful study, do not have the pressure of cooking food every night and, above all, getting well paid for my efforts - NOW I have a problem with my schedule. Just because I know what it is to have an easy life. Such is our thankfulness for what God gives us!
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