You are not alone

Way past the witching hour and wide awake. The early hours of the morning seem to be when the mind is at its busiest, with nothing to distract it from its senseless going over of all the apparent and imaginary stresses of life. We all know that when we wake up in the morning, nothing will have changed and we will wonder why we lay awake, tossing and turning, when the sun still rises and the moon continues to show only one face and the Earth is still turning. All care dissipates like mist before the morning sun, and again we push it from our minds, where it lurks to wake us on another night when we least expect it.

We are not alone in this experience, as social media instantly informs us when our friends are also drinking tea at 3.30am and doing a crossword, or posting on Facebook to their friends on the other side of the world - there is always some advantage to be awake at night.

Tonight the sky is clear and dark, except for the region around the moon, and the constellations - ever constant - serve as a reminder that what we think are insurmountable problems are just moments in time that will come to an end without the dire consequences we imagine. We can look back at many sad, frightening or desperate moments and realise that they are in the past and we survived; we shall survive again and become stronger every time through knowing that this is just life's journey and each experience is to teach us who we are and what our purpose is in this world.

These are general musings on lying awake, senselessly worrying over what in the end is meaningless. I hope it will be of help to someone who needs to know they are not alone.