I’ve been trying to figure life out in one way or another for the last 20 years or so, since I graduated high school way back in Y2K. Mostly this has been by reading books, seeking the ideas that would finally make everything simple and clear. But it’s also been through spiritual practice, through friendship and falling in love, through travel, and of course, through substances.
All these things are important in their way, but I think the most basic and effective thing you can do for yourself if you want to make your life significantly better is so much more fundamental: sleep. Tiredness, a friend once mused, is the root out of which so many of our problems grow. And conversely, sleep is the unassuming solution to so much that we struggle with from day to day.
One of my theories about the way we’ve organized the world and waking life is that most people are pretty tired most of the time, and indeed, many of us don’t even really remember what it feels like to be well rested on a consistent basis. When was the last time you got eight or more hours of sleep for a week or more at a stretch? What would the world be like if we all slept enough?
Certainly, life under capitalism can be crushing, particularly in this specific, somewhat nightmarish historical moment. Going to bed early won’t correct for systemic inequality, war or climate meltdown. It also…
