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Insomnia

Victor TanPost a Comment

Insomnia is a horrible curse, but it’s one of those reminders out there that sleep is one of those things that we can rightly call a blessing and that ultimately, the greatest things within life come from within and not from without, from the simple acceptance of the struggles around us, rather than just continually trying to force things to happen in the way that we want. Nowhere is this more clearly represented than in the domain of sleep.

The simple act of just closing your eyes and having yourself fall asleep is one of the most beautiful and restorative things in the entire world, and when it’s taken away from you, it reminds you at the end of the day that one of the greatest joys in this world is one that is inbuilt, one that lies within you, one that has the ability to transform you if only you will accept it, rather than challenging it by adulterating it with things like caffeine and other sorts of things out there that disrupt the balance, change the equation, and otherwise impede you from doing what is natural to you.

That the body can rest is something that we assume by default should happen, but in reality it’s one of the greatest luxuries upon the planet yet one of the easiest to corrupt the moment, we allow our minds and our psychologies to take over and to take on the driver’s seat, during which we begin to push ourselves to go for more than what is natural, to push ourselves beyond to do certain things when in reality they are neither needed nor desirable for our ultimate furtherance.

Often we sleep late just because we are worried about those things, about all the different matters that will not be completed if we simply do not fall asleep, yet ironically enough that is one of the very worst things that we can do for our productivity because it causes us to be able to do in 8 hours what normally we might do in 2 or 3, causing the entire balance of the equation to fall.

That is what happened today.

Spent too much time thinking about too many things, drank too many cups of coffee that I shouldn’t have drunk, spent time thinking in bed about how to fall asleep only to end up forgetting all the lessons of all the books that I read about sleep and all the benefits that it could have yielded if only I had simply kept my mind loose and ready rather than attempting to corroborate the story with wakefulness that shouldn’t even be there in the very first place while worrying about things that frankly, I shouldn’t even be worrying about.

In many ways I think that if a person were to step back from things that adulterate and that change the way that life is lived, if we simply stepped away from our own lives and from intervening in them, we would be able to do better, with less stress, with less concern over the course of our own lives.

It is something that I am trying to learn even now, to be able to lie in bed and to fall asleep, to relax, rather than to push myself forward constantly without regard for the consequences or anything else of that nature.

If there is anything good about this bout of insomnia, it is at least that I know that I will try in the morning to cherish sleep a little more, that there will be a bad day because of what happened today, but that at the very least there was a reflection that accompanied it that moved me in a positive direction. I don’t know how far it will move me along the way, but I do know that the course of a person’s thoughts can entirely transform the direction and the path that he or she may take along the way. I don’t know when sleep will come tonight, but I can only pray that it will be soon, and that whatever lessons that I shall learn will come along and be well learned from the strengthening of mind that comes along with the greatest of repose.

Goodnight, friends.

I hope I’ll fall asleep soon!

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