I have one daughter who insists she's awake when I first come into her room to get her up for school. Her eyes are shut, she's unresponsive to prodding, and ignores my entreaties to get up for school. If I come back in ten minutes, she won't have moved, but she'll swear she was awake all along.
Another daughter will audibly protest at being disturbed, but she's been known to go have lengthy conversations and even to go downstairs, eyes wide open;; only to have no recollection of the experience two hours later when you pry her from bed a second (or third, or fourth) time.
The third daughter springs out of bed alert, jumps into her clothes and is ready to face the door before you can say jack sassafras, but even she has been known to smack the alarm clock into next week and then complain that it never went off.
What does it mean to be awake, anyway?
I think a lot of us imagine ourselves as fully awake and alert, like the Buddha on the day he was born. According to Buddhist Scriptures, Siddharta Gautama came out of his mother's womb, looked around and presciently announced that this would be his final trip around the karmic wheel.
Being awake is a learned process, begun with the incoherent grunts that suggest we actually might be human, and running up the spectrum to the point that we actually know where and who we are, if nothing else. Usually we stop there, and become awake to our desires and needs.
Wake further. Learn to hear the lonely cry of the child seeking approval from her parents; the torment of those who struggle through life without friends to laugh, love and live with; and the pain of those whom the world was chewed on for too long and too well.
Wake still more, and discover that you have the tools within you to be the one who sets prisoners free, teaches the lame to dance, and even breathes new life to the dead.
Be awake.
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