Six Hours

I decided I was getting older when I noticed that six hours of sleep had become enough to wake me up.

The discovery felt unfair. A younger version of me could sleep through half the day without planning it. Now I could go to bed late, hope for a long morning, and still open my eyes after six hours as if my body had made an appointment without telling me.

I joked that I was getting dangerously close to my grandfather. When I was younger, people like him seemed to belong to another category of life. They woke early, followed routines, liked quiet mornings, and somehow knew what time everything happened. I did not imagine that these habits arrived one ordinary day at a time.

That is probably why birthdays are poor instruments for measuring age. A number changes once a year, but the body reports progress through smaller events. You wake earlier. Loud places become less attractive. A bad chair begins to matter. Staying out late acquires a price the next morning.

The strange part is that freedom arrives at the same time. Nobody tells you when to sleep anymore, but now your own body does. You are finally free to stay in bed until noon and suddenly unable to do it.

That morning, six hours did not feel like a health statistic or a scientific fact. It felt like evidence.

My grandfather had moved one step closer.