I know I have written about sleep before and how important it is to our happiness and it’s worth noting that after several late nights, I finally managed to get a decent set of hours in deep sleep. What a difference that makes. My mind feels clear and rested. I can see clearly and think clearly.
I am wondering out loud this morning why it is that we don’t get enough sleep. Certainly it is not biological. Our bodies are built to sleep. What I think happened as we developed is that our culture’s advances has inadvertently interfered with one of our basic needs.
I know for example that the body starts to release chemicals in the evening in order for us to feel sleepy but this gets messed up by all the glowing screens that are in our lives. Those pesky little screens fool our bodies into thinking that it is a lot brighter outside than it really is. Now, I am no scientist, quite clearly, and I’m not even sure to what extent that is true, but it makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Add to all of this our fact pace living and no wonder that we have a tough time to do what should come so easy and naturally to all of us.
When you are smack in the middle of a work day you don’t really realize how crazy startling yourself awake is just because someone set a time for the business to open. As free as we think we are, it turns out that we have given away one of our primary freedoms, which if ignored leads to some tired days and nights, not to mention some interesting decisions and a general sense of malaise.
I don’t see much preached about sleep. I hear a study say that we all need to sleep for six or eight hours a night, but I don’t think we take this seriously enough. We see time as a luxury we don’t have, and we are forever chasing time. Maybe its time we see time differently, that we live in the present. Enjoy what we see and what we have, instead of always playing catchup and medicating with coffee just to survive another restless night.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@kstonematheson
