Pooped

A few random thoughts on sleep.

Got up before 5:00 this morning and took an Uber to the airport for a flight that isn’t scheduled until tomorrow. Upon discovering my error, I got into another Uber and returned home. So that’s how my day started. Currently, I’m on my back porch trying to decide if getting up before dawn has ruined my day because it spoiled my sleep or actually made it awesome because it gave me more hours to enjoy. Ruined, I think.

What is it about sleep? A third of our lives is spent not living our lives at all, but rather recovering from our lives. Sleep appears to be necessary for our survival, although scientists still don’t fully understand why. All mammals sleep, although how much they require varies by species. Some aquatic mammals can go as long as a month between sleep. Koalas sleep for 22 hours a day, which makes sense. They’re so high most of the time that all they can do is sleep. Interestingly, ants take as many as 250 “power naps” per day. A small number of non-mammalian animals like jellyfish do not require sleep, but jellyfish don’t have brains so, who’s going to tell them it’s bedtime?

Most of us consider sleeping a pleasurable activity, but it’s weird to think of it that way because we don’t consciously experience sleep at all. How can an activity we do not experience be pleasurable? But it is. Or, perhaps, it is the activities around sleep we find pleasurable. Bedtime routines, getting under the covers, extinguishing the lights, allowing our brains to gradually drift off… and then, later, opening our eyes to discover our bodies are right where we left them, our conscious experiences have flicked back on, and we are faced with the newness of the moment in which we find ourselves.

You guys go. I’m just gonna take a lil’ breather.

That first moment of wakefulness after sleep can be peculiar. A common experience – especially if you travel a lot like I do – is to awaken unmoored. There are times I wake up when, at least for a few moments, I do not know where I am. It’s disquieting sensation and sometimes I have to fight my own brain not to solve the problem too quickly. Because as weird as it is, there’s a strange joy that accompanies the confusion. When I do not where I am, there’s also an accompanying, subtler sense of not knowing who I am, at least for a moment or two. I love those moments because they return the waking world to a place as mysterious as the dream world. There I am, some person in some bed in some hotel in some city, and – for a couple moments – I do not know the identity of any of it. I think that moment might be the closest we adults can ever come to recapturing what it’s like to be a baby.

Dreams, too, are a mystery. Scientists don’t know why we dream. Some theories: dreams may help us process emotions or to consolidate memories. Dreams may be associated with creativity in some capacity. Or they might allow us to “rehearse” dangerous scenarios without experiencing any actual danger. Dreams can be symbolic or literal or surreal. They may be deeply meaningful or utter nonsense. We don’t know.

We do not have the same dreams, but certain types of dreams recur for multiple people. The “Naked at work” dream. The “actor’s nightmare” dream. Many people have dreams in which their teeth are falling out. Or some people have dreams in which they have to return to school years or decades after graduating. We may all experience anxiety differently in our waking lives, but in our sleeping lives, we seem to filter it through many of the same dreaming scenarios.

That’s weird, right?

Interestingly we refer to wishes as dreams: “I dream of dancing on Broadway,” you might say, even though dreams rarely play out in ways that fulfill our desires. More often, they’re just kind of scattershot, loose narratives that always somehow involve us wind up with us making love to Burt Young from the Rocky movies. Right?

In your dreams,.

As I type this, my dog Squash is asleep beside me. I’m watching his belly rise and fall with his breaths. His rear legs are twitching a bit so maybe he’s dreaming. Dogs dream, too, although scientists remain conflicted about whether they, too, dream of making love to Burt Young from the Rocky movies. His rest is peaceful and untroubled, the way my children used to sleep. We used to tiptoe into their rooms at night just to watch them the way parents do, their fat little legs splayed open, arms thrown over their heads. We’d look at them and smile, disbelieving that this same creature was causing a holy terror not an hour before. Maybe that’s why we sleep, to ensure that our parents don’t throw us out the window.

Now it’s lunchtime and I suppose I should probably try to salvage some of the day by concocting something out of leftovers and a microwave. After that, though, when I’m good and full, I’m taking a nap.