Despite its maximum-volume, most annoying “Classic” intermittent
blaring, the alarm failed to fully penetrate the dream that was fully occupying
my sleep-deprived mind. Normally, my alarm wakes up my wife first, who in turn
wakes me up, shaking me until I respond. When she has gotten up earlier, or when
I am travelling without her, I often remain in my dream-occupied half-sleep for a while longer. It is as if my
neurotransmitters, compromised as they are by my Parkinson’s disease, refuse to
face the reality of each day any sooner than they have to.
On this particular occasion, I was travelling with my good
friend, Carson (with whom I had travelled around the world in 2012). He was
well aware of the impaired state of my hearing, as well as my morning dopamine
deficiency routine. He had been awakened from a deep sleep in his room some 20
feet away by the aggressively grating sound of my 8 AM alarm. When I didn’t
turn the alarm off, he ventured into my room, shook my shoulder to wake me, pointed
in the direction of the alarm clock and returned to his room. It was then, amid
the electronic shrieking of the alarm, that I noticed that, squinting at the
bold red numbers showing on the alarm clock beside my hotel room bed, it was 8:04
AM.
I reached over to turn the alarm off, pressing the snooze
button numerous times, with increasing frustration at its lack of response. But
I could not seem to get the noise to stop. Anxiety mounting, I sat up,
searching for the power supply to the alarm clock. Of course, this required
that I turn the light on and pull out the bedside table to search for the
plug-in, which was cleverly hidden behind the bed headboard. After much effort,
I was finally able to find and extract the plug from the power bar. But the
alarm squawking continued. By then it was 8:11 AM.
Carson returned to my room, this time pointing to my iPhone
dutifully recharging overnight on the same bedside table as the hotel alarm
clock. Enough neurons were firing by this time for me to realize that I had not
set the hotel alarm clock at all. As I did normally each morning, I had relied on
my iPhone for my wake-up call at 8 AM.
Lately, I have been spending a lot of time evaluating the
stress-producing “noise” in my life. Increasingly, I have felt a sense of
alarm. Life is not getting any shorter! My capacity for coping with complexity
and passionate pursuit of numerous priorities at the same time has been waning.
All the while, there is an alarm sounding, a wake-up call that I am anxious to
silence. Hitting the snooze button doesn’t seem to work. Even attempts to
strangle the sources of anxiety fail. What can be done? Maybe the alarm clock
saga can act as a suitable metaphor.
Consider these questions:
Have I chosen the right alarm clock? What am I going to rely
on to wake me up? Is it reliable? Will or should it begin with family, friends,
or professionals?
What are the sources of “noise” in my life, as opposed to
important “alarms”? Do I have a plan to deal with these?
Have I set the right time for a “wake-up call”? Will the
time for which my “alarm” is set give me enough sleep so that I will be capable
of meeting the demands of the day ahead of me? Do I have the right balance
between self-discipline and self-care? Am I prone to hit the “snooze button”
too quickly or not quickly enough?
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