Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Irreverin

Home
Progressive Christian
Wide Awake: True Confessions of a Bedtime Hater

Wide Awake: True Confessions of a Bedtime Hater

Last updated on: October 2, 2017 at 11:48 am by Erin Wathen

Wide Awake: True Confessions of a Bedtime Hater 2017-10-02T11:48:41-07:00 Erin Wathen

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“I rarely get tired.” “I’m fine on 5 hours of sleep.” “I am fueled by caffeine and the Holy Spirit!” Or my favorite: “Life is too short to sleep.”

This has been my mantra for years. Life’s too short to sleep. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I’m not tired. Really.

Except, just lately, I’ve acknowledged that “I don’t get tired often, but when I do, I hit it pretty hard.” And then I had to kind of admit that my qualifying statement–“but when I do”–was becoming more the rule than the exception. I started to hear my own insistence of i’m not tired i’m not tired i’m not tired as the manic testimony of a toddler who is just this side of an epic pre-naptime meltdown.

I’m tired. There. I admit it. Maybe my body has figured out it’s about to be 40 and it is rebelling against me, but I’m ready to own up. I’m tired. All over, bone deep tired.

pexels-photo-271897

Trouble is, I’m not sleepy. And there is a difference. Because people who are sleepy GO TO SLEEP. They just lay right down and fall right into it, no pills or fancy rituals or anything. I will never understand this. I am not a good sleeper. When I’m tired, sleep is the last thing I want to do. I wouldn’t call myself an insomniac. I get to sleep eventually. But it’s not easy, and it’s not something I look forward to. When I’m tired, what I want is downtime. Reading; chatting with friends online, or texting my brother and vicariously enjoying his traveling musician life; or maybe binge-watching Netflix and drinking wine from a box, whatever.

Which is why, when I finally recognized and acknowledged my fatigue, I started offering myself radical self-care in every other way imaginable. Sleep seemed like this radical last-ditch option, the newfangled experimental procedure that you employ when the grim-faced doctor comes and tells you there’s no other way. “I’m sorry ma’am, I know it’s not the news you hoped for… But we’ve tried everything else, and there’s nothing left to do except just lay down and close your eyes for a few hours. There’s never an easy way to break that to a patient.” Seriously, I have done everything else. Exercise? Almost every day. Green vegetables? I might turn into a kale and spinach smoothie. Massage? All over it. Therapist? On speed dial. Aromatherapy? Bring on that lavender oil. Play along some soothing new age-y music while we’re at it, and I’m so zen you just wouldn’t believe.

But going to bed early? Miss me with that.

Why am I sharing this public confessional? Because I read this article yesterday–The Shorter Your Sleep, the Shorter Your Life. And it has totally scared me straight. Overnight, I’ve gone from “life is too short to sleep” to “If I don’t sleep, my life will be too short.”

How can one article completely change my sleep philosophy? Well for one thing, it contains all sorts of alarming statistics–based on actual science– about all the ways that sleep deprivation totally wrecks your body, your cognitive state, and your mental health too. Awesome.

It also offers some speculation on why such a high number of Americans are trying to get by on less than 7 hours of sleep at night. The short answer: electric lights, digital devices, alcohol and caffeine. Our usage of all these things has ramped up in the past few decades and made us a nation of walking zombies. It is affecting not just our health, but our relationships, and the very fabric of our society. In fact, the more I think about it, a national epidemic of sleep deprivation is probably the true heart of our healthcare crisis.

But I think the most powerful effect of this article was its timing in my own life. It offered some very direct answers to the lingering internal question I’ve been holding lately, which is: why are none of these things I’m doing for my body making me feel better? Well, because I’m withholding the one thing that my body is trying to tell me it wants.

With that in mind, I had to recognize the convicting truth of this statement: “In the developed world, sleep is strongly associated with weakness, even shame. We have stigmatised sleep with the label of laziness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting. It’s a badge of honor.”

Well, hell. That sounds a little too close to home, doesn’t it?

It also sounds, ironically, like the kind of thinking that I preach against ALL THE DANG TIME. I am constantly telling my people that we are embodied beings, so much more than anything we can accomplish or produce. And yet, here I am, spinning my wheels long into the night and wondering why I feel so dang tired all the time. This article was a blessed wake-up call for me. Or rather, a go-the-f***-to-sleep call. It is a glaring testament to some of the ways that I do not quite practice what I preach; a reminder that, while I know better, I do not always embody and internalize what I know to be true about the nature of God, and the nature of embodiment.

There you have it. My public confession is my accountability. I’m ready to call this what it is–a spiritual sickness–and offer myself the only real antidote available, which is rest. I’m going to get off of this hamster wheel of toxic, caffeinated productivity, and maybe let my body catch up to the rest of me. It is just my wild hunch that many of you might be on the same vicious treadmill. Let’s hop off together, and aim to stick around awhile longer for the people we love.

I make this shift grudgingly. I am a night owl, and I hate giving up that window of down time to a state of non-awesomeness. I find sleep boring and un-fun (yes, Enneagram people, I am a 7. Full stop, no wing ambiguities). As much as I like to think I’m avoiding sleep to more fully enjoy my waking moments, I know deep down I am just programmed to think I should be doing something, every second. Having had a mirror held up to that particular dysfunction, I can’t un-see it. So, I’ll resign myself to the pillow and let it have me for awhile.

Now that I think of it… one night a couple weeks ago, in some rare fluke of whatever, I slept for NINE hours. I could not help but notice that I felt amazing the next day. I accomplished more before noon than I normally would in a day. And I was like, “wow, crazy,” scarcely acknowledging that maybe it was because I was functioning like an actual human-being and not an espresso fueled robot.

My goal is to have more nights like that, and more good days to follow. I’ll let you know how it goes. But it might be awhile. I have a feeling that once I lay down, I may not get up again for awhile.

Previous Post

September 11, 2017

How 9/11 Gave Us President Trump

Next Post

September 29, 2017 Whose Face Do You See? Humanizing the Healthcare Debate

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category a good week for progress Advent and Christmas Being a Person desert life faith and community Good News for Progressives Lent and Easter Marriage and Family S*^! Jesus Says sabbatical road tripping Spirituality in Culture Talking to Strangers the "Best Stuff I Ever Ate" diet travel Uncategorized writing Writing Prompt Wednesday

Select a Month January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 February 2011 July 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does Hebrews say is sharper than any double-edged sword?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A righteous man's prayer Faith The tongue The word of God