I suddenly realized something that had never crossed my mind before. When I’m in bed under the dark sky, that darkness is only one point of a large shadowy band of earth. And all along that band, from North to South, people are sleeping together.
Of course, not everyone is sleeping. Someone is driving a truck through a rainstorm and fighting sleep. Someone else is awake and sweating after a nightmare. Somewhere a man is reading a book that he just can’t stop thinking about. A couple is having sex in a hotel room or maybe some doctors are operating on a drunk driver after an accident.
But most of us are closing our eyes together along that shadow. People across several countries and even more cultures all share those few hours of sleep. No matter how different their days are, they still sleep the same as anyone else. So, though I was restless waiting for my job placement in Japan, I closed my eyes and slept in bed in the shared darkness.
