The Princess and The Pea

But to sleep as I did when I, with the world, was younger, ah, that would be sweet!

I woke at 4am last night, unable to get back whence I came, and was up until the break of day. Surely these restless nights form an index to my one, abiding problem with a new life in Washington: the unmitigated hours spent in cross-country flight, the breakdown of our schedules, the surrender of normality, the strangeness of midnights that start us awake from the seeming of peacefulness. I am at a loss how otherwise to address these broken cycles, but by the use of sleep aids, but I refuse! I refuse to employ artificial means to the solution of a problem that is, itself, artificial.    

When you think about it, much of what we, as humans, do, is painfully unnatural. The hours we keep are merely one among a thousand such infringements against natural law. Though the world does not turn off at the close of a business day, yet we make it nearly impossible on ourselves to get anything done at night. We schedule the opening and closing of stores, of banks, of doctor offices, such that the sleepless among us are without recourse. They are adrift between the hours of 12 and 6, and when light returns to the world, they pay an anguished balance for their unspent slumber. So, too, we relegate to nighttime all the unsavory engagements that our society frowns upon: midnight casts with morals crepuscular as their black-domed theaters.  

And yet, our senses remain so untarnished as to cry out in agony when our abuse of them comes to be unbearable. It occurs to us only when we are in pain, that the way we live may not be healthy. Where does this pain originate? When will it stop? Is it a sign? In the early parts of our lives, we are at liberty to make mistakes and to bounce back from our upsets. But as the years progress, diseases take their toll more potently, and we are left with the aftershocks reverberating out of time. It is a damn good argument to get ourselves in shape while we still have time, before problems become conditions.

With a new schedule demanding weekly cross-country travel, I am reminded how crucially important it is to take care of ourselves. Right now, I’m suffering a sleepless night here and there, but what of next year, when habit becomes lifestyle? I must attend to these problems now before I am forced to take medicine!