It's not too unusual (I think) to wake up in a new place and experience a moment of disorientation: Where am I? Wait, I'm not waking up at home in my bed?
(The best incident I had of this was when I was about 27 and I was doing a lot of traveling for this company I worked for at the time, Viscotek. On this particular occasion I was doing a whirlwind tour of sales and service calls on the other side of the world (Japan, Singapore, India, and Malaysia back to back to back to back). I woke up one day in a hotel room and just stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out where I was. I was so tired and jet-lagged and confused I was going through my itinerary and trying to figure out which places I had already been when I noticed a big red arrow on the ceiling. I thought, hmmm, there's a clue: Which country would put an arrow on the ceiling of an hotel room? I thought - Malaysia here I am! (Gotta know where Mecca is if you want to pray in a new place and Malaysia was the only Muslim dominate country I was visiting))
Yesterday (Monday), I woke up a bit early but in the usual home bed and I experience a profound disorientation in time. Was it Friday morning and I needed to get ready for work with some pep as the weekend was about the begin? Was it Saturday or Sunday and I could decide how to spend my morning? Or, was it, oh no, Monday? I had to replay recent events in my head to decide Saturday and Sunday had just recently passed and therefore it must be Monday morning. Woe is me.
I say disoriented in time because I think the usual expression is simply 'I woke up confused', but I think a lot about Space-Time and I think it is revealing that we are okay with getting disoriented in space but we don't reflexively think of time as having an orientation.
Next time a student arrives late for class I will ask them "Are you okay? Experiencing some disorientation in time?" Perfectly normal question, right?
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