Sleep

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.

~Ernest Hemingway

I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.

~Avery Sawyer

Every day, each of us comes to a point where our minds and our bodies shut down.

Sleep is our opportunity to recharge, a time to let the day’s bumps and bruises—both psychological and physical—heal. It is a natural break in our daily routine that allows us to reset and try again the next day.

For some, sleep is just another part of life. Like eating or breathing, it is an activity that sustains their lives and allows them to function.

For others, sleep is a magical place that they can never get to often enough. It’s like not having enough water in the desert; these people are always thirsty for sleep. They may sleep well, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. They wake up still tired to their bones but have to start the day. They tell themselves, “I’ll get to bed early tonight,” but it never happens.

Others have a love-hate relationship with sleep. For some reason, they just aren’t very good at it. It may be too much coffee during the day or too much alcohol at night. It may be what they eat. It may be that they are unable to turn off. Not being able to sleep can be frustrating, infuriating, and even scary.

You see it start to happen but try to maintain denial. “Just lay still and relax,” you tell yourself. But your mind is going a mile a minute, or that song is playing over and over in your head. You get up, drink some water, and get back in bed, warm and comfortable. But it doesn’t last. Soon, you are tossing and turning again. In the back of your mind you know you are going to be incapacitated from fatigue the next day. Then all the issues and problems, disappointments and failures, and worries and fears arrive like a tide and are magnified many times over.

There are several ways to handle insomnia when it happens. For years, I would lay awake, hour after hour, as the situation became worse and worse, until sleep became impossible. Sometimes, my fatigue would get so intense that I would drift off just before dawn and only a couple of hours before the alarm clock sounded its awful knell. Sometimes, the insomnia would go right on through to morning and the ultimate horror—no sleep at all.

I’m being dramatic, but insomnia can be scary.

Sleep deprivation is commonly used as a form of torture. When we don’t sleep or can’t sleep, our minds and bodies scream out for it like a drowning victim for oxygen.

For a while now, I’ve taken a different approach to sleep. I don’t force myself to try to sleep when it’s not in the cards. I get up and do things. I pay bills. I do “work work.” I read. I write. Eventually, my sleep instinct resets, and I am well and truly tired. It’s better than any sleep aid. If I wake up after 4:00 and can’t get back to sleep, I just get up and start my day. This may be the end of a sleep cycle, when waking up is more natural. It’s better than struggling to get back to sleep then having to wake up while in a deep sleep phase.

I also use the occasions when I’m having a hard time sleeping to reflect on the thoughts that have been keeping me awake. These subconscious messages can provide good insight to my conscious self. What we think about in the middle of the night can be a marked departure from what we think about during the day, when our thoughts pass through the filter of all the business in our lives.

I also nap (See Nothing). Naps are like little nuggets of pure pleasure. They can make a bad mood good. They can turn a day of grogginess and yawning into one of energy and vitality. They are gold, silver, and diamonds all wrapped into one. The nap—I’m a big fan.

Being tired is no fun. It can really get in the way of living a fulfilling life.

Think about that—I’m going to take a nap.