Tea, Fire and Boredom

Flash of Nocturnal Thought

I write right now in a time when a few moments ago I was about to go to sleep. Three minutes ago, I thought I preparing for a peaceful night of sleep. But sudden bursts of insight make for poor bedmates, as they contain a sort of restless energy. Ideas strike when they wish; and the job of the observant writer, nay the observant human, is to catch them in a medium of choice. And so I write.

We are compelled by nature into a need for sleep. Despite the copious consumption of caffeine and other energy inducing chemicals, people usually will go to sleep. This should be a natural cycle like any other pulse or beat of the world. We measure the days of our lives with the beating of a heart, a movement of a sun or the cycle of sleep and awakening. I too enjoy a good sleep in so far that I wake up refreshed and renewed.

Yet in sleeping, we are essentially dying, for a limited time. We set ourselves in a comfortable place and lie there, more or less still, for a couple of hours. It offers a quiet escape from the normal hustle and bustle of the day. Perhaps we may dream, but I rarely remember such vision and instead remember a veil of black. Scientists will readily point out that the brain is anything but dead during sleep cycles. Brain waves, heart beats and other vital signs can be detected during sleep as evidence that the person is not dead. But I am thinking of death on a more personal level. For even if my body still had strength and my heart still motion, what good would life be if I was not conscious to enjoy it?

The overworked student will sometimes brag about how is going to sleep a large amount of time on a given weekend. I have heard many such students sleeping more than 12 hours than waking up to sleep another 12. Perhaps part of this is purely physical recovery from their obsessive weekly behavior, though I feel health can be more easily protected by a more sane schedule during the week. I cannot understand such pride in sleeping so much. To be asleep is to simulate death. And in this slumber, you miss out on life. A normal sleeping person will sleep 6-8 hours per night. This means that a person’s age should be reduced by 25% or 33%, depending on their habits. For a 40 year old man has only been awake for 30 of those years ( or perhaps 0, depending on thoughts and emotions.)

I enjoy the feeling of a new dawn, but I enjoy even more is the moment before sleep. After completing my chores for the day, I can curl up in my dark bed and momentarily reflect on the day’s happenings. I feel I am able to do my best thinking at such times, as I am, in that moment, most isolated from all other people. The daily clamor and prejudice slip away into the inky abyss. And all that is left is myself. In a sense, that moment before sleep is the entry point to a new day. Many people make resolutions on a New Year. I make every evening my New Year (though with more dedication than most other New Year’s resolutions). For when I consider all the detail, energy and life of a given day, I remember how incredibly long those 24 hours has been. I am reminded of the things I have sped past in my hurry on a normal day. For tomorrow I will be more conscious of the falling leaves and more amazed at the ancient stonework that I overlooked yesterday. In that way, each day becomes a year and each year stretches for centuries.