Never Take for Granted a Good Night's Sleep

It is 3 a.m. on the Monday after Thanksgiving as I begin drafting this essay. I just polished off the last small leftover serving of a pineapple casserole, affectionately known as “Aunt Elsie”, our daughter brought to dinner last Thursday. Family lore has it that many years ago, my wife’s Aunt Elsie paid $50 for the recipe and then shared it with the entire family—thus the “Aunt Elsie” moniker. But already I digress. The idea behind this essay flows from the toast I made to our family at Thanksgiving dinner. Basically, I asked everyone to think about the people and things that are important in their lives but that they take for granted. For example, we take for granted that we are a loving family and that as a group we have wholly positive relationships with one another. On holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when stress levels tend to be higher than average, we still all get along without any negativity. Every grouping of family members within the extended family helps in the meal preparation, presentation and clean-up activities without hesitation and without complaint. These are relationships to be relished and treasured, which implies we need to recognize them before we can fully appreciate them rather than take them for granted (as we generally do). Also, we should not limit the exercise of identifying and appreciating “good things and people” we take for granted only once a year, on Thanksgiving Day. There is no reason it can’t be a quarterly exercise, for instance. Let me offer a few areas where we might tend to take people or other things for granted, and suggest that it is a productive exercise to identify them, hold them up to the light, and appreciate them for the good they add to our lives. We might take for granted loving and positive relationships within our families, or with friends outside our families. We might have someone who always has our backs covered, or makes us laugh, gives solid advice or serves as a mentor to us. We might have natural talent—in art, music, athletics or public speaking. Present company excepted, we might have uncommonly attractive features. Or it might be as simple and yet so critically important as getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis. Each of us has our own unique list of things and people we take for granted. There’s no time like the present for identifying them and perhaps, in the case of people, reaching out to them to let them know how much we relish the good they bring into our lives. End of essay. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Consider what follows as a P.S. In it I will explain why getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis is such a big deal, one you need to recognize and appreciate. Hopefully, my travails as a certified insomniac will help you appreciate the value of a good night’s sleep and why you should count it as one of your great blessings, never taking it for granted. For starters, think about going to bed regularly between 11 p.m. and midnight, my consistent pattern, but then waking up anywhere between 1:00 a.m. and 3 a.m., which also is my regular pattern. At least for your family, friends and business associates in the same time zone, you can’t call them for a minimum of five-to-seven more hours. That leaves a lot of time to fill, if like me you can’t go back to sleep in bed for another several hours, no matter how often or how hard you try, and even if it is the one thing you want more than anything else. Go sit at your computer? Email family and friends a bit? Sure, but that doesn’t take hours to accomplish. Business emails will take place during the workday, not in the wee hours prior to work. Read a good book? OK, but not for five-to-seven hours and not every day. Moreover, from experience, at three in the morning it is tough to read more than a few pages of even the most absorbing books without taking a brief cat nap and dropping the book (without marking the page you were on). Play games on-line? Perhaps, but not wanting to be judgmental, I question whether playing games on-line helps me live up to my full potential or puts bread on the table (no and no). As my wife knows, playing bridge on-line with partners and opponents from around the world probably commands more of my awake-time overnight than any other activity. It’s a kick to find myself playing with an Australian partner with opponents from London and Sao Paolo. Sitting quietly in my den at 3 or 4 a.m. playing bridge on-line, I sometimes am guilty of nodding off for 30 – 60 seconds. When that happens, the game itself has an automatic feature for preventing long delays by removing a slow player, or one who left the game without acknowledging their departure. If/when I nod off, the game removes me, which is fine with me. When I nod off while playing bridge with my wife and friends at any hour of the day, however, it’s not the gentle removal that I experience. Rather, it’s a “Mark, Wake Up!) that I hear as I jolt to attention and try quickly to assess the game situation. I am not proud of this accomplishment, but over time I have become a cat nap expert, able to snooze briefly for 15 – 60 seconds almost anywhere I can find a chair—at the kitchen table, in the family room or the den, even seated in the bathroom on a hard piece of plastic. The issue here is that I neither intend nor try to fall asleep in those situations. It just happens. To a greater extreme, I’ve fallen asleep briefly twice while standing and having a conversation with someone. With apologies for this unintended rudeness, I must admit it was the same woman both times! Let me assure you as readers that the fault lies entirely with me and my lack of sleep in this unfortunate set of occurrences. Hopefully, this overkill on the woes of not getting a good night’s sleep has accomplished its goal of making you appreciate what a gift it is to sleep long hours at night. I am not looking for suggestions regarding traditional cures for insomnia, because that is not the purpose of this essay. And besides, I think I’ve heard them all. I will, however, welcome miraculous cures, so long as they do not involve a warm glass of milk shortly before bedtime.