Sleeping is So Easy, Even a Baby Could Do It

I once told someone that I went to bed at 9:30, when in reality I went to bed at 9:07. Why I had to lie about this slight difference of time is beyond me, except that one of my biggest guilty pleasures is sleeping.

I remember that night that I settled down to bed at 9:07 p.m. My eyes had grown heavy after reading a book. I decided to turn out the light. I looked one last time at my phone and saw the time. I felt embarrassed. But as I pulled the sheets over my shoulders and settled my head into the pillow, reality rose above my head like floors past a sinking elevator. My embarrassment soon dissolved. I was fast asleep.

It often occurs to me that I would be, in my thirties, far more successful if only I slept less. Indeed, when I feel most productive, inspired and anxious to create, I forget about sleep. On the other hand, when I feel depressed, I sleep way more than necessary.

If I didn’t sleep so much, I might be more successful. Perhaps, this is a fallacy we all tend to, a formula of blame that goes: if it weren’t for just this one thing wrong in my life, I would find more success in these other areas.

As I made my way from 9 p.m. to midnight that night I went to bed so early. I sunk into what I think of as the “meat” of the sleep. That time when you neither dream, nor remember anything: the closest you get to “nothingness.”

Sometimes I feel that sleep is just so good, it will be the only thing I look forward to in the day. Some say “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” But it’s not sleep itself that is so great. It’s those limits and borders that encapsulate sleep that make it so good. How could you know how well you slept if you never wake up? Sleepiness, wakefulness, abruptly drifting to sleep, gradually waking from it: these are the tools we use to measure the value of sleep.

Herman Melville’s epic tome Moby Dick opens with a great treatise on sleep that has stayed with me (I’ve never got much farther than this opening passage, to be honest, though I’ve tried several times; too often, I’ll fall asleep). He writes:

“We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel delightfully and unmistakably warm… like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.”

Likewise, I say, you cannot know true sleep unless you experience those moments around sleep itself: drowsiness, wakefulness; those limits of true sleep.

The only thing I liked about the movie Inception is that they were constantly taking naps.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Leo would look at me and say, “We lost another mission!”

“Yes,” I would reply, “but I slept great!”

In fact, I posit that Inception is not a sci-fi film about a team of agents using dreams to plant an idea in an enemy’s mind. It is actually a group of mostly grown men who find an occupation that lets them take naps on the job. Through all the action and misadventure, the film sneakily plants the idea in our heads that napping at work is acceptable.

Studies suggest you need a good 8 hours of sleep. I am thinking of undertaking such a study that will suggest that most studies are dumb. Numbers mean nothing to me in this case. Sometimes I can sleep 3 hours and feel great, and other times I can sleep 10 hours and still feel sleepy.

I woke that night around midnight. I live above a bar, and some nights it’s around this time that it makes the most noise. The noise never bothers me. I’ve never complained. Rather, I find it comforting. It reminds me that I am here, in my bed, enjoying sleep.

There is a children’s book that my parents used to read to me when I was little, called The Philharmonic Gets Dressed. The book opens on a darkening sky with the sihlouettes of buildings, water towers, and possibly the Williamsburg bridge. As we close in on the windows, we see the little apartments of every member of the orchestra. Each person in there is getting ready to go play their instruments.

This book so impressed me as a child, that I am certain it has something to do with why I live in New York today. I loved that each person had their tiny worlds compacted within other, larger worlds.

When I wake up at midnight after sleeping a while, I feel the magnitude of this idea upon me. I am removed from the world even as I am a part of it.

Usually, if I wake up at midnight, I fall quickly back to sleep. But now dreams start to materialize. A dream has no clear beginning. Rather, it is inchoate and vague. You find yourself in a desert, suddenly, or walking along a beach. Or the beach is the desert.

I dog-sat for a coworker last weekend, and when I awoke around 2 or 3 in the morning, I suddenly remembered that I was in the coworker’s apartment. It was unsettling to mix slumber with the reminder of the workplace. I suddenly wondered, “Does my job own my sleep now?”

It made me think that the wonderful thing about sleep is that it is always your own. In a world where companies are constantly contesting for your time, thoughts, and space, sleep still remains that unchartered territory: the place where even you barely belong to yourself.

And yet, there are times when I feel this isn’t totally true. Over the past several years, a gradual change can be noticed in my early morning dreams. More frequently, I have dreams of struggling with technology. Often, I’ve tried to take a picture with a smart phone in dreams, or I’ve struggled to find just the right filter on a sunset picture.

A few days ago, I dreamed I was walking along a beach with a friend. We were carrying a laptop and were trying to Skype another friend. The webcam had a fisheye lens and made us look bloated.

And, in waking life, I had a conversation with a friend. I had asked him if he had been somewhere. He said, “yes,” then paused. “No, I haven’t,” he said. He went on to explain that he often mixed dreams with reality. For instance, he had seen so many photos online of Turks and Caicos — in articles and in Facebook posts from his friends — that he began to dream that he went there. With all the images we are bombarded with, our brains tend to use these as the basis for dreams.

Waking up at 4 a.m. is an entirely different experience than waking up at midnight. Now, the bar has quieted down. Even my neighbor who watches TV all day has turned down her television. At this time, it can feel like all the world is asleep.

Except for me.

The weights of the world present themselves to me between the hours of 5 and 7 in the morning. A set of little brass weights to offset a balance: each an individual, unique size such as 1 lb, 2 lbs, 5 lbs and 10 lbs.

So 1 lb weights are: how I will pass tomorrow at work without falling asleep; and what I will eat for lunch, dinner. 2 lb weights are: how I will productively spend my free time after work; whether or not I’ll have it in me to call a friend back. 5 lb weights are: things that are going on at work; whether I’ll be able to pay off my student loans this month. The 10 lb weights are: what am I doing with my life? Should I be married with children already? The 10 lb weights, if they come around, are the ones that pull me from bed, force me into the sobriety reserved only for the day.

I see navigating the early morning hours of sleep as a pilot who has to land his plane on an aircraft carrier. Underestimate the height and distance of the aircraft, and you’re doomed. Overestimate it and you’ll miss your landing point.

I wasn’t always this good at sleeping. As a child, I tormented my parents with insomnia. When I had it, every few hours I would go and wake them. At first it was insomnia, but it doubled back on itself when I would start to believe that I would never be able to sleep. Over time, I’ve learned that worrying about getting to sleep was itself the cause of my sleeplessness.

So, if you wake up at 4 a.m. with a head full of thoughts, you must adjust immediately. If you lie in bed awake for too long and indulge in these thoughts, then it will be difficult to steady the plane and get back to sleep. I usually read a book as soon as I wake up, to ease my head.

The hours just before 7 can often be the dessert of sleep, if you do it right. Here, the dreams are most vivid and alive. Never be too careless with these last moments of sleep: a whole night’s rest depends upon the fate of this last hour!

I wake up almost consistently at 7:45. I’ve learned to wake up without the use of an alarm, the sound of which is the bane of sleep. Growing up, I always had to use an alarm, and the thought of it in the morning would also sour a good night’s sleep.

That night I went to bed at 9:07, I woke up early and felt fit and refreshed. “Time to see the day ahead,” I thought to myself, “and look forward to another night of sleep!”