The value of insomnia
This is not about crisis-related insomnia, like I experienced following a divorce, when I spent over a year wringing my hands and sleeping less than four hours a night.
Every new day seemed like the last. As afternoon shadows lengthened, a pall began descending over me and I started dreading another sleepless night. I was broken down and disconnected from myself, preoccupied with suffering, and barely able to engage in daily activities.
With therapy, I eventually came to understand that my problem went beyond being sleepless following the death of a relationship. I needed to wake up to how disastrously I’d been neglecting my spiritual life – my spiritual being.
With a strong sense of social responsibility, I’d assumed a role of human doer, relentlessly working to make a better society. I was recently reminded of that as I paused to watch ants scurrying and from their ant-hill nest along a sidewalk crack. I’d been like an ant, doing my part for the community.
But human beings are more than ants. I relearned, remembered, that we’re composites of doing and being creatures. Healthy, satisfying human lives require nurturing both physical and spiritual parts. By the time therapy ended I’d begun putting life’s pieces back together, sleeping better, and doing a variety of things to care for my spiritual self – my soul. I would stare at birds at our feeders, listen to classical music and daydream, and sometimes wander aimlessly on a street. Just being.
The valuable insomnia I’m talking about is the kind that occasionally catches me by surprise nowadays. It’s the kind where I go to bed tired and don’t go to sleep. Or I sleep soundly for awhile, then awaken and stay awake.
If there’s nothing on my mind, I lie quietly, resting until sleep naturally comes. Once or twice a year I decide I wasn’t tired after all, get up, and read. Sometimes an unresolved problem pops into my mind. When that happens I take time to thoroughly examine it. Once – without going over and over the same thoughts.
Now and then that’s enough. I discover a different way of looking at things and decide that what I thought was a dilemma really isn’t. But if the issue isn’t settled, I decide that’s the best I can do for the moment, resolve to revisit it during the daytime, and put it out of my mind.
An uncluttered mind luxuriates in the silence of darkness. It allows experiences to drift in and out, like miniscule waves lapping against the shore. It permits novel ideas and random thoughts, feelings and fantasies to emerge from the ever-awake soul.
And it enjoys natural background sounds like rain or distant thunder, chirping frogs, hooting owls, yipping coyotes and unidentifiable nighttime critters making sounds as they go about the business of living their lives. I’m comforted by the sounds of approaching and departing trains.
Occasional episodes of insomnia provide me with opportunities for performing routine maintenance on life’s problems while nourishing the soul. They’re ‘icing for the cake.’
Thanks for your wise and soothing words about dealing with insomnia. Great article, Jim.
Beautifully written. Thank you.
My wife of 22 years recently decided she’d had enough of me and left. I’m writing about grieving, transformation (again) and hope and will be posting that soon. That process has added a new wrinkle on what’s called insomnia. In short, if I’m not going to sleep I go and sit in my Lazy Boy/altar chair and wait for my mind to bring new ideas and thoughts to mind. Then I process them until I’ve had enough and go back to bed for restful sleep. At this time of life it doesn’t matter what time I wake up – but it’s rarely after 9.