The Wake Up Call
By Alfonsina Betancourt
Technology has great advantages. Being woken up every morning by a voice-controlled speaker seems like an episode from The Jetsons I used to watch as a kid. Alexa turns off an alarm every morning and half asleep, we have to try to make her understand that we are not ready to wake up yet and we need more time.
“Alexa, wake me up in five minutes,” the instructions sound very clear in one’s mind but they come up as a non-sense slurp of words that all of the algorithms put together by Amazon can’t come close to decipher.
Instructions are usually repeated several times until Alexa finally understands, which means that by repetition we have awaken ourselves from deep sleep. The alarm usually goes off five minutes later, and five minutes after that in an endless story. In a way, I miss the snooze button on a conventional alarm clock. Just one hand was enough to shut the alarm ofd and guarantee a later reminder.
Being a night owl most of my life, I usually despise waking up in the morning. Fortunately, I also suffer from the 20th century’s disease called “obsession with productivity,” so after only two tries I am out of bed and ready to seize the day. However, I have been thinking lately on the importance of wake up calls, not necessarily as it pertains to voice-controlled speakers but mostly about life events that shake us to our roots and kick us out of our dormant state as a bucket of cold water. When we remain apathetic and paralyzed by life’s circumstances, what does it take us to wake up? What makes us answer the call?
I am convinced that life keeps trowing lessons at us until we pass the tests that we need to excel. Like a video game were we need to master an activity before upgrading to the next level, in life the lessons begin small. Each time the tests get more complicated. If we did not learn how to do something in the earlier stages, we will have a hard time accomplishing them later on. In the same way, life tests seem to get harder every time.
Humans despise change and we tend to want to stay in our comfort zones where everything is known. Usually, small alarms go off when something is not working in our life or we need to make an unavoidable change. We tend to ignore those subtle calls. But what do we do when life throws us a gigantic, monumental, unavoidable wake up alarm? Are we allowed to hit the snooze button, maybe send some voice commands? Can we remain under the blankets with our eyes closed?
Maybe, but very likely, not for a long time. So when the alarm is unavoidable how do we use it to make us productive and seize the moment with integrity and growth?
These are some steps that might help us reach awakening.
Listen: When the alarm goes off, we first need to hear it. When the alarms sound in our life, we need to tune our ears as well. How do we do that? With our intuition. When we are in tune with our intuition, we can see how things truly are and when they need improvement or radical change. The first step is to detach from our desire outcome, and see and hear things as they really are in the present. A lot of people are stuck on the believe that if they acknowledge something isn’t working the results will be negative and catastrophic. So they only give themselves a chance to focus on the positive outcome. The inherent problem to that approach, is that we cease to hear what really is because we insist in controlling the tune we want to hear. It is true that positivism can take us a long way, but blindness can keep us stuck, so we need to make sure we don’t confuse both. Intuition requires full presence without judgement. Intuition and active listening are then, the first steps to waking up.
2. Evaluate: Now is the moment where we can evaluate the situation and answer the questions: Is it working? Does it make me feel alive? Is it aligned with my purpose? Does it make me vibrate? At this point, we need to make sure to avoid judgment. Because we are so attached to the possible outcomes we want, we are afraid of answering, That is natural, but also detrimental. Nothing is truly bad or good, it just works or not in its current state. So when the alarm goes off and we are tempted to ignore it, we need to become active questioners.
3. Get up: The call has been placed and now we can wake up and see with fresh eyes any situation. When our intuition and our non-judging mind get together, we are free to start a new chapter (even if is a micro one) or recalculate our route. It is the time to embrace the sunshine and let us be moved trough our roots. Then the time of decisions and changes come. We are fresh and ready to seize the opportunities life throws at us.
I certainly wish life was as simple as sending voice commands to a speaker. But there are times when we are called to battle and even when we feel sleepy, not ready or lazy, we have no other choice but becoming belligerent and proactive. Every day we have tiny tests to prepare ourselves for when the huge calls come in. It is our responsibility to prepare ourselves not for the unthinkable but for the possible. We got an unlimited potential that can be sharpened in the easier levels or it will force us to master it the moment we are thrown in front of the lions. There is no doubt that practice makes everything easier. So let’s take all the opportunities we can today to practice to hear, evaluate and show up so that we are prepared when the ravine goes off. Life does not always offer us a snooze button and as far I have seen, it does not answer to a “five-more-minutes” command either.
“If the alarms just went off, be ready; consciousness is just around the corner. ”
But we can change the game and open our eyes, even when we feel like staying dormant. The reward of awakening is realizing that every day is a new opportunity for us to become fighters, and fighters are made in the battlefield, not in the comfort of our cozy blankets. Awaken we can give better instructions to be understood by the most sophisticated voice-command speakers. And awaken, is that we can become free of snooze buttons and dormant states. If the alarms just went off, be ready; consciousness is just around the corner. Let’s seize the day (and life) and let’s become the fighters we were always meant to be. All it takes is a wake up call and a “I am ready” answer and our capacity to fight suddenly becomes very clear; as clear as sunshine and light filtering through the windows, and open eyes that see the world as it is and as we are. Awakening is just the beginning; the best version of ourselves awaits on the other side, far away from the snooze button.