LIFE skills are essential for living. In 1993, the World Health Organisation defined life skills as ‘abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.’ Life skills are many and are related to different sectors. When asked, ChatGPT named six such domains: cognitive and learning skills, social and interpersonal skills, emotional and personal skills, practical and daily living skills, civic and ethical skills, and digital and modern-era skills.
Life skills can be taught as part of life skills education, as promoted by WHO and other agencies. Often, such skills are also included in learning areas across the curriculum.
Life skills vary across cultures and times. Driving is an essential practical skill, especially in Western societies. In Australia, many jobs demand driving skill from prospective employees. However, driving is not essential in Bangladesh, where people who own a car usually employ a chauffeur to drive it for them.
This piece is about a life skill that is universally important but is not given deserving attention in the Bangladeshi community, at home or in the diaspora. This skill may appear too simple, but its development needs commitment, investment, and practice. It’s the ability to wake up from sleep on one’s own at the right time. This skill belongs to the category of practical and daily living, as previously mentioned.
Many people can’t wake up at the right time. For some adults, it may be a lifelong challenge, as they may not have developed the habit even in decades. Many children have to be awakened by their parents in the morning. We have handy technological resources such as alarm clocks on our mobile phones. Although these devices are our full-time companions, they may not help when it comes to waking up from sleep. The alarm may do its job, but we don’t do our part.
It’s a common struggle for Bangladeshi migrant parents to wake up their school-going children. I have heard the story of one family where parents collected their sleeping children from bed and sat them in the car. They helped them put on their school uniform and fed them in the car and drove them to school. This may be an extreme scenario, but the truth is our busy life becomes more complicated because we and/or our children find it difficult to wake up at the right time. We may neglect this as a skill. Many families begin their day with struggles which could have been turned into a smooth and peaceful beginning. Imagine a weekday morning when everyone in a family woke up on their own at the right time, performed their morning activities and got ready for school or work. Nothing short of a blessing!
Sleep is one of the blessings of human life. Those suffering from insomnia can tell how lucky those are who can have a good night’s sleep every day. If we have the habit of going to bed late, we may not have the required amount of sleep, making it hard to wake up when we need to. Sleeping uninterruptedly as long as we like is one of the most common wishes for time-poor people. Leaving their bed is probably a challenge for them, particularly if they slept late.
In our family, I play the role of a human alarm clock for everyone. My experience tells me that waking up from sleep is an everyday jihad for children.
As I call our children for the Fajr prayer, I find them sleeping peacefully. It may be a cold night of five to seven degrees or a hot one of 30 to 38 degrees. My job is to invite them to sacrifice their sleep, leave the cosy bed, and make wudu so we can pray. I can imagine what a big sacrifice that is — nothing short of jihad at a personal level.
As I perform this daily routine in Australia, I am reminded of one of my primary school teachers who used to wake up me and my fellows. I went to a special residential school for disadvantaged children in northern Bangladesh. More than a dozen kids slept on the same wooden bed in one room in the residential facility. Just before dawn, Chand Sir would come from his home in the neighbourhood to wake us up for Fajr. He called us using endearing words such as ‘abba’ and ‘baba’, manipulating his voice in different ways. I am reminded of my dear teacher as I apply his method to our children in Australia.
Chand Sir would never give up his mission of waking us up. I remember after his repeated attempts, we would reluctantly leave our bed, make wudu with cold water, and walk for 10 minutes to the masjid. When I see Muslims congregating for Fajr in Bangladesh, Australia, or someplace else, I understand they had left their comfortable bed, washed their faces, hands, and feet, and travelled different distances to join the prayer.
In the poor rural community where I was born, my parents and our neighbours went to bed immediately after Isha prayer. They had no reason to stay up late burning the kerosene lamp, which would be a luxury in their economic situations. No surprise, the whole village was up by sunrise. During winter, some people made fires for animals in their cowshed at night. Neighbours would come and enjoy the warmth sitting around the fireplace in the morning.
I have sustained my habit of going to bed early and waking up early since my childhood. However, this habit is linked to a guilt which haunts me even to this day. When we were studying at the University of Dhaka in the 1990s, I had brought with me my childhood habit to the city. One of my close friends and classmates had the same habit. We lived in the same suburb, away from the university. One morning, after Fajr, we met somewhere, and we decided to visit a senior student from our department who lived in the neighbourhood. He always helped us with our study. We had a few questions to ask him that day.
We never thought he would be sleeping when the sun was already up. He was rightfully furious because we tried to wake him up from his deep sleep. We felt so ashamed and guilty that I am still haunted by that unpleasant experience.
Every life needs the right amount of sleep every day. We also need to wake up at the right time to meet the demands of life. Developing a workable relationship with our bed is a life skill that needs to be treated as such. Our success in many areas largely depends on this skill, which we can ignore only at our own peril.
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ÌýObaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning.