Damian Williams

Which do you prefer- morning, afternoon, evening or night? Why is this time of your day special? 

I am a teacher- which means that my work- life extends beyond the classroom and beyond the school. Preparations for a forty- five minute lecture can extend for sleepless nights and constant lesson plans that often do not quite go as planned.  Let alone the wasted minutes of our lives where we think we can catch a coffee break, but somehow have ended up in attending to a student’s queries and we do this merely because we find pleasure in doing so. 

At the end of the day, we all fight for time.

With the ever-growing rush of a quick life, mornings no longer are calm and peaceful that we would wake up to. My mornings are a havoc! It’s a race with the clock and members of the household: who can get dressed faster and get out of the house before the morning rush hour traffic can beat us. Needless to say, I am not a morning person. 

However, even bees find moments to just lay low for a bit, spreading their wings and dozing off for a bit on a flower. Busy humans look forward to that moment in their day where they can just kick back and allow themselves the simple pleasure of rest and recreation. And that recreation can be found in what I like to call my golden hour.  It is the hour after I have had my dinner and simply do what makes me the happiest. I, for one, find pleasures in trifles- a book, some music, reading, language or religion studies… This golden hour provides me a caboodle of activities to choose from, but more importantly, it provides me the opportunity to let go of the burdens of work and do something that defines me as a person and not a busy- bee. 

My golden hour provides me with the mechanism required to blow off some steam and calm me down from the post- classroom trauma and pre- classroom stress. It preps my body and mind for the upcoming weariness of the day that will follow. It kills the feelings of failure that I might have had encountered during the day and gives me a moment to smile and relive the little pockets of joy that I might have had the pleasure of stumbling upon.

How much joy can be derived from a single hour by just doing what makes me happy! Fancy doing what makes me happy each hour!  

I wouldn’t call myself a night- owl. A night- owl is one that finds joy in their waking hours of the dead night, but I find my happiness in an hour prior to the minute I close my eyes to sleep. It’s the hour when the world around me is retiring for the night- choosing to sleep on the day’s pain. It is the moment when the nightly air of chatter and the last of the soaps die down and shut off giving way to the melancholic crickets and me to chirp. It is this hour that I open my windows and breathe in the last of the day’s cool air. I’d feel it creep into my lungs and give me the last bit of confidence to get my creative juices running for a last golden hour activity. And when I am done, I lay down to rest and thank the Lord for another day that I had gotten to live. I wouldn’t know of anything else that happens- all I know is that I awaken each morning with a smile ready to beat the morning rush hour. 

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