One Thing or Another: Perchance to Sleep

Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease

A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m an early riser anyway. I’m at my most alert and creative in the mornings, and if I manage to sleep until 5:00 a.m., I consider it a good night’s rest and I’m ready to go.

Do we sleep less because we’re older, or are we older because we sleep less? It’s a mystery for the ages, pondered at 3:00 a.m. when we’re in bed staring at the ceiling or the wall, wondering if we will go back to sleep. It’s a toss-up: sometimes we do, and many times we don’t. Something trivial or significant catches our mind like a shimmering fishhook snapped up by a grouper, and soon we know we might as well get out of bed.

This has been the case for me for a long time now. I don’t have any trouble falling asleep, but at least two or three nights a week I find myself wide awake in the middle of the night. I wonder how our sick cat is doing. Or I wonder if Congress passed a bill I knew they wouldn’t. Or I wonder how long I can lie there wondering about these things before my body takes control and slides my feet onto the floor.

I don’t know what the science says on this, and I’m not convinced it matters. Taking something to sleep doesn’t work for me, since I have no trouble getting there. I also don’t like the way soporifics make me feel, or at least how I imagine they make me feel—groggy and more thick-headed than I naturally am. I have to believe it’s connected to aging, though, since it’s so common among older people. I see it on Facebook sometimes, these posts put up well before sunrise, lamenting the inability to sleep more than a few hours.

I’m an early riser anyway. I’m at my most alert and creative in the mornings, and if I manage to sleep until 5:00 a.m., I consider it a good night’s rest and I’m ready to go. If I wake up and it’s 6:00 a.m.? I think I’ve overslept and the day is half over! But there are many times when it’s 3:00 a.m. or even earlier, and I shake my fist at the sleep gods, asking them why they torment me so.

I’m also a lifelong nap taker. I believe in the healing power of an hour’s sleep on the couch. And I often feel more rested after a good long nap than I do most mornings. For reasons that will always be a mystery to me, I sleep more deeply curled up on the couch in the afternoon, with our cat Wilma doing her little cat snores on the cushion above me, than I do just about any night of the week.

I used to think this would change, that I’d find the right supplement or the correct relaxation technique, or even a medication I thought was harmless enough to use regularly. But now I think it’s just part of the journey, and maybe there’s some good in it. The less I sleep, the more time I’m awake to marvel at this thing called life.