Sleep early, will you? : Blog # 119

Sleep early, will you?

            Why don’t you sleep early? Most of us have heard our parents ask that to us, haven’t we?

        Sleep - when and for how long,  is one of the earliest habits that are induced in us. For most of us, it would have been against our liking. Remember nap time at pre-school? That is exactly what we are talking about here. May be that is the reason why we take much pleasure in staying up late as the first sign of revolt as we grow up.

       For many of us now, staying up late has become a habit. We feel odd if we go to bed at the time our parents do. But more than the ‘cool quotient’ attribution, there is more to it. To begin with, If we go to bed early, we will have to deal with our thoughts. There are realms of thought which all of us do not want to explore. If we go to bed late and exhausted, we drift off to sleep in seconds. Neither is there any thought process involved nor are there any accompanying questions which we do not have answers to.

            Another reason is a misplaced sense of insecurity. Hasn't there been a day when you planned to sleep for say 2 hours and you wake up to find that an entire afternoon has passed bye? There is a sense of disorientation there. A feeling that we have missed out on some happenings when we were asleep. We think the world passed by while we were indulging in a siesta. A bit of it can be attributed to our need to constantly stay ‘connected’ with the world happenings, much thanks to the social media and the omnipresent cell phone.

          It is also during these dark hours that many of us indulge in some entertainment. This is when we find time in our cluttered lives to read a book, catch a movie or some good videos on internet. Strangely enough, it is in these wee hours that we catch up with friends and acquaintances too.

I envy those who have a regular sleep pattern. Their nights are not exhausted and their mornings are fresh. They stay wide awake in the day and sleep peacefully at night and not the other way around like most of us.

We take to all kinds of books and self improvement practices to bring solace to our wandering minds. Like for many quagmires in life, the solution is right in front of our eyes. But what we do not realize is that at times, we need to shut our eyes to find what we are searching for.

                                                                                                            

Arun Babu.

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