Answer the alarm

Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years. He awoke one day, his beard now gray, to find himself a strange man in a changed land. A war was won, a nation begun, his children grown, his friends unknown. And he had slept through all the throes. Or so the story goes. 

Of course it's just a story, a myth, a child's tale. No one could really sleep for twenty years. 

Or can they? Can a daily routine traveled on auto pilot turn into a rut that digs deeper day by day like water that turns a groove into a riverbed? Can it dull the senses into a sedated sameness so that passing time is only noticed when something grabs your  attention and forces you to see and remember? 

An alarm clock rings at some unimaginable hour of the morning. I roll out of bed to do something this day that will be different than any other day. This is not routine. This will be a day to remember. Answer the alarm. Wake up.