This morning, I woke up at 7:30 am, exactly 30 minutes before the start of first period: obscenely late. Blinking in a combination of confusion and dismay, I hit (end) repeatedly on my cell phone, convinced that I must have, in my stupor, pressed some wrong button. However, upon stumbling reluctantly from a warm haven of down and cotton into the cold, hard kitchen, I found that about 40 minutes time had indeed vanished!
I had gone to bed approximately 35 minutes later than usual, around 11:38. This appears early, no doubt, considering that we, as participants in the modern rat-race, require extensive time and effort to achieve our numerous goals. It is not uncommon-- widespread, really-- at my school for students to sustain their studies and activities with fewer than 4 hours of sleep per night.
Nightly, without fail, I obtain at least 7.5-8 hours of sleep. A dearth of rest never makes it easy for me to focus completely in my endeavors, either physical or mental. I am quite aware that it is obvious that not everyone necessitates the same number of hours; after all, many very successful people are refreshed and function well with fewer.
However, it is not how many hours one gets that is important. We hopefully are already aware of the potential health effects sleep-deprivation can have (hormonal imbalances, mood shifts, etc.) through mass-media distribution, so that is not worth discussion. The real issue here is that the restless are not putting themselves as the highest priority. In order to achieve our objectives in life, we compromise our health-- eating on the run, skipping exercise, disregarding natural sleep patterns.
We make excuses: "Oh, I'm putting myself on the back burner because I'm helping others." Unfortunately, to help others to the best of our ability, we ourselves first have to be fit physically and mentally.
Labels: awareness, priorities, sleep
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you have alerted me about my neglected sleeping time and i assure you that i will work at it!
You have a good point.
lol, speaking of which, i should probably get to bed soon.