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Last night my wife woke up in the middle of the night. She was worried and anxious, which in turn woke me up; I rolled over and comforted her until she felt okay enough to go back to sleep.
We keep an digital clock on top of the chest in our bedroom. To see it, I need to roll to my right, but my wife sleeps on my left, so in order to face her, I have to turn away the clock. When my wife fell back asleep last night, I realized that I hadn't once looked at the clock, and I had no idea what time it was. I decided to go back to sleep without checking the time.
I can't consciously recall the last point in my life when I had no sense of the current time and I had no desire to find out. I always pay very close attention to the time, and I know most other people do too, usually out of necessity. Almost everything about my life is dictated by the clock: when I wake up, when I eat, when I go to work, when I leave work, when I take medicine, even when my wife and I go out on dates. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, usually the first thing I do is look at a clock, either on the nightstand or on my phone.
My wife could have woken up at 11 PM. She could have woken up at midnight, or 1:30, or 3:30, or fifteen minutes before my morning alarm sounded. I simply don't know. And that lack of knowledge was, strangely, liberating. It was a wonderful thing in that moment to not worry about how much sleep I had left or if I'd have a chance to rest sufficiently before beginning my morning routine. I just let it go. I didn't stress about it. And I think I slept better as a result.
My wife knows what time she woke up last night, but she hasn't told me, nor have I asked. It's not important. What matters is that for just a moment, I was free from the pressures of time.
If only my boss could see it that way too.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]