Every cloud has a silver lining. That’s also true for most situations in life, even the dreaded jetlag has hidden treasures within the blur of it all.

Jetlag used to be my least favorite part of travel, a nuisance and an interruption to getting into the local action. In the last few years, I’ve learned to embrace it and its fleeting nuances.

Traveling east is the worst, even Matthew Walker shares this in his book Why We Sleep and explains that it has to do with it being easier on our circadian rhythms to simply extend a day (travel west) than to totally disrupt it (travel east). Depending on the distance of travel and location on the globe, it’s typical to arrive at an arbitrary time on a different day having had a very truncated and uncomfortable “night’s” sleep on the flight. Furthermore, time in the pressurized cabin tends to confuse the digestive system. I often arrive home exhausted and unable to make a decision or have a coherent conversation about most things. I don’t even know if I’m hungry or not or want to sleep or unpack or… And then if I want to sleep, should I sleep or should I try to stay awake a little longer? There’s no right answer here, I’ve tried it all and like most things, “it depends.”

Despite this fairly reliable forecast for what to expect with jetlag, the silver lining is actually pretty special. Whether traveling east or west, you can expect a high probability waking up very early in the morning or even in the middle of the night as I often do. Lying awake in bed and hoping to go back to sleep is likely to be pointless, especially if your body was quite adjusted to the previous time zone because the melatonin hormone receptors need time to adjust to the new rhythms of day and night. This is a temporary state and once we have been in the new location for some time, an estimated one day per hour of time zone traveled, we will be adjusted to the local time. That’s to say, enjoy it while it lasts.

We go through security before the flight itself and are in a secure protected space and separated from so-called threats and the usual connections of daily life during the trip. I like to consider the adjustment days or jetlag period as an extension of that transit and a time when I’m not required to follow the rules and routines of ordinary life. As much as this is possible, it takes the pressure of and allows what may be annoyances to transform into something special.

The gifts of jetlag that I have experience include:

• Wide awake in the dark night – as I mentioned, there’s nothing that can be done about this. It’s kind of a mystical and mysterious time that we aren’t usually awake and alert to experience. It’s incredibly quiet and peaceful whether inside or outside.
• A cup (or several) of tea – this probably started from our regular trips to Ireland (traveling east) when we could count on a kettle and a tea set up in the hotel rooms.
• Strange mix of clarity, confusion, and curiosity – this partially depends on if I’m leaving home or coming back home, but since I’m out of my usual routine, there seems to be space for new and interesting ideas come up or I gain perspective on something that hasn’t been quite clear.
• Eat a meal at an unusual hour – I don’t usually eat late at night or very early in the morning, but during the period of jetlag when the rules don’t apply, it’s ok to enjoy something to eat when the need arises.
• Dawn – We are usually awake at dusk but how many of us experience dawn regularly? It’s an incredibly sacred time of the day. It is known that birds wake up and sing around 42 minutes prior to sunrise. As recounted in Kelly Turner’s book Radical Remission, this time of morning has a higher concentration of oxygen in the air than anytime of day due to the first light triggering photosynthesis. When I am awake at this hour due to jetlag, I make it a point to get outside. I’m sure the extra boost of oxygen is super beneficial after being enclosed in the airplane cabin for several hours. It’s a multi-sensory experience listening to the birdsongs and watching the shifting colors in the sky and the surroundings as nighttime becomes day.
• Sunrise – This is the best gift of jetlag. Whether it’s a cityscape, a beach, a desert, a forest, or just the local neighborhood, the sunrise is an experience to behold that we most often don’t experience simply because we are more focused on getting on with the work of the day. I promise you won’t regret a couple of days to be in the present moment of the early morning and enjoy the splendor and beauty of the sunrise.

The image for this post was taken on a dawn/sunrise walk I took on my first morning in the Arizona desert last month having arrived from London the previous day.