Technology has great advantages. Being woken up every morning by a voice-controlled speaker seems like one of the Jetson episodes I used to watch as a kid. Alexa turns off an alarm every morning and half asleep, we have to try to make her understand that we are not ready to wake up yet and we need more time.

“Alexa, wake me up in five minutes,” the instructions sound very clear in one’s mind but they come up as a non-sense slurp of words that all of the algorithms put together by Amazon can’t come close to decipher.

Instructions are usually repeated several times until Alexa finally understands, which means that by repetition we have awaken ourselves from deep sleep. The alarm usually goes off five minutes later, and five minutes after that in an endless story. In a way, I miss the snooze button on a conventional alarm clock. Just one hand was enough to shut the alarm and guarantee a later reminder.

Being a night owl most of my life, I usually despise waking up in the morning. Fortunately, I also suffer from the 20th century’s disease called “obsession with productivity,” so after only two tries I am out of bed and ready to seize the day. However, I have thinking lately of the importance of wake up calls, not necessarily as it pertains to voice-controlled speakers but mostly about life events that shake us to our roots and kick us out of our dormant state as a bucket of cold water. When we remain apathetic and paralyzed by life’s circumstances, what does it take us to wake up? What makes us answer the call?