Somewhere in the skies, I've lost my sleep tonight. Honestly, I had an awesome plan to sleep early and wake up late and treat myself with a nice quality beauty sleep. But what I ended up with, is a sleepless night. Now I'm actually done trying all the possible things that could put me to sleep, such as - pray, meditate, read a book, play a boring game, count sheep and also pretend to be fast asleep...hehehe. Nothing seems to work, so what best I can do with this time is write about it.
While I was struggling to fall asleep, I noticed that the nights that we usually term to be a very quite time of the 24 hour day, isn't really as much. As a kid, I used to happily imagine that the world turns upside down in the night and then straightens up again at dawn. As if the fan were on the floor and the tiles up on the ceiling. As if the bed was upside down and I was almost hanging in air...how did I not fall? Was I glued to the bed or is gravity also reversed when it's dark? So when I would wake up and ask mom about all this, she would give me a adequately convincing reply, "well, when I woke up early morning everything was indeed upside down and then all things started falling in place as the sun came up." Yeah, that made sense to me. But what I learn now at an age in my early 30s, is that my imagination as a kid wasn't all that wrong. Surprised? Me too.
The night isn't really quiet. It's full of sounds that we don't hear but exist. There are things that change their place and/or position from what it was when we kept them there. For example, a plastic bag that we may have placed on a table, sometime in the night moves a bit to the side and if there's some wind, the bag might just fall on the floor. A book kept on the table alongside the bed may move a bit to the edge or even fall off...may be because you ending up pushing it unknowingly. At 3.30 am, the magnetic clip of my bag, that I may have left open, pulls itself to close with a self generated click sound. A truck loaded with 'God knows what', passes through a road that's some 500 meters from my home, and I still manage to hear it pass, along with a mild vibration that it generates on the road due to its weight. How and why do we term the night as quite? Is it because when we sleep, we actually switch off from all the sounds? If so, then how can we claim to have anything in the name of a subconscious mind? Or is it that we are just so used to pretending that all the things we say and believe are the final truth on this planet.
Nights aren't quiet. They are rather noisier than the days. We do feel peaceful, calm and quite in the day when there is no major sound/noise around us. But if you are awake in the night, you would lose count of the kinds of sounds you end up hearing. I feel its the same when you sit quietly for a while. You suddenly start hearing so much that your mind takes some time to process the overload of information. You not just hear a lot that's been happening around you but you also come to terms with your mind and end up in an in depth discussion with yourself. What seemed quite, suddenly becomes noisy. So may be when you stop hearing some sensible stuff when awake, you must stay up in the night and listen something important.
Now this night need not be the time between sunset and sunrise. It is more of the darker days in your life when you do not understand much of what's happening with you in the day and when you do have an opportunity to keep quiet and introspect, you sleep off. But how would you introspect and get to hear the sounds of the night if you keep talking all the time? For once you have to just shut up and hear what's happening in and around you. Try to understand that if it's become so mundane, when and how it begun? Think about the possible reasons that led to this dull day and gloomy night and get some solutions which would give you that much desired peace again.
It is only when you try and listen to the sounds of the night, that you would understand how things went upside down when you ignorantly slept off. How you put fingers into your ears to not listen to what could have been a life changing sound? Can we not put it in practice to keep quite for a while and introspect, at regular intervals? May be it changes the way life is, or at least our perspective. And may be it just makes us happier than ever before,
