Morning

Trou­ble sleep­ing again last night. It’s strange; almost all my life I’ve had trou­ble get­ting to sleep and trou­ble wak­ing up. Even as a child, I remem­ber watch­ing the hands of the clock go an hour or two after I was put to bed. Every morn­ing there was a strug­gle between me and my par­ents to get me out of bed and ready for the day.

This is why, although I’m pay­ing atten­tion to my recent trou­ble sleep­ing with some con­cern for my health, I’m actu­al­ly lik­ing the dif­fer­ent pat­tern. I’m not hav­ing any trou­ble get­ting to sleep at all. In the past few years get­ting to sleep has gen­er­al­ly been eas­i­er, but in the past month or so I’ve been falling right to sleep prac­ti­cal­ly as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Last night I woke at about one A.M. and then again at four-thir­ty. My alarm was still wait­ing for the appoint­ed time.

I had time to obsess about all my con­cerns and fears for long enough to get tired of them. I had time to decide how to go about my morn­ing. I had time for morn­ing prayer and med­i­ta­tion. I watched the Sun rise over the Bay and have time to ride the cable­car to the office. The sky is beau­ti­ful in all its shades from fiery orange to deep azure to pow­der blue and even a lit­tle green­ish by the sea. The build­ings in the city are blaz­ing in morn­ing­light. At this hour the hand­ful of com­muters are cor­dial to one anoth­er and it feels more like a small town than the big cold city it will become in an hour or so.

Does­n’t seem so bad to sleep a lit­tle less.