Many of you would probably be astonished by the title. I
mean what on earth can be more beautiful than sleeping? Or more precisely, what
on earth do we have to do if we are not supposed to sleep? I remember my morning
alarm has always been one of my most hated inventions of science throughout my
school years. Although “early to bed” was never what I could ever force myself
to like but “early to rise” was even worst. (That was something I couldn't like
even if that really makes me “healthy, wealthy and wise”.) Then the question is
then what changed my mind and made me believe that I won’t die if I don’t sleep?
I had a visit to Youth Development Centre, Murree in January
2011. The funny thing is out of 85 hours of my stay there; I slept only for 11
or at most 12 hours and if I’m writing this story today, that certainly implies
I survived. So the story is, we were divided into four groups there and were
given some challenging tasks to do right after some extra long conference. We
were kept awake for hours and when fully exhausted, we were asked to give
presentations. We used to go for a walk from Punjab House Murree to the
opposite end of Mall road twice a day. You know Murree is a hill station and I don’t
know about others but I have a good stamina of walking on smooth straight road
for about an hour but in a place like Murree I had to sit down after every 10
minutes and wait for my heart to stop jumping out of my body. So we went
through the “privileged trips” and I’m telling you I survived.
I met a person named Syed Hussain Haider there. He is a
person who didn't have enough money for his graduation and he is a person who
spoke to the United Nations. He is a person who received autobiography of Dr.
Mahathir Muhammad from Mahathir himself (the one he used to present to heads of
states and his friends only). He told us he was suffering from Typhoid and Malaria
and his boss made him stay in office for three days and gave him loads of files
to work with them. He didn’t sleep at all to complete the job and he told us he
survived. Now he is a person who gives 3 hours to sleep out of good 24 hours of
a day. He says life is short and he has so much to do. I remember the night
before our presentations we rushed out of the conference room at 2:30am and he
told us he will be available till 4:00am for us if we needed any help regarding
presentations. I went to him with another group member to ask a few questions
about presentations. We hoped we will be free in ten minutes; we came back to
our room at 4:30am. He is a man having very versatile experience of life; we
actually felt we don’t have enough time. Life is short and we have a lot to
learn. We have a lot to explore. I found out I will survive if I don’t sleep
that night but I’m not going to have a chance to listen to that person again.
We never know how strong we are unless we encounter a
calamity. We think we can’t do it. We don’t accept challenges. We consider ourselves
weak so we tend to become actually weak. We don’t find ourselves capable enough
to see the beauty of first ray of sunlight and praise it so we keep sleeping in
the morning. We don’t feel like taking the pledge so we stay mediocre always. We
don’t have the courage to face reality so we go for drugs. We actually take
refuge in half death when we can’t enjoy the beauty of life. Challenge yourself
to find out how strong you are. And I’m telling you, you will survive with less
amount of sleep. You will survive in fewer facilities. You can survive without
anything. I’m not sure about Oxygen but don’t worry I’m on it and I’ll let you
know if I survived without Oxygen.