What to do about Insomnia

not being able to sleep is deeply
frightening we panic about our ability
to cope with the demands of the next day
we panic that we are panicking the
possibility of sleep recedes ever
further as the clock counts down to
another resource stood irritable dawn
our societies have learned to treat in
song with the best applied discipline we
know medicine and in particular with
pills powerful enough to wrestle
consciousness to submission but rather
than immediately medicalizing insomnia
we should perhaps try to understand
where it Springs from in human nature
and what it might in its own confused
way be trying to tell us and in many
though note not all cases it may go
something like this
insomnia is the minds revenge for
something extremely important that we
forgotten to do in the day namely think
most of us do of course have a great
deal in our minds during the daylight
hours but these tend to be practical
procedural immediate matters the sort
that keep at bay the
deeper questions about our direction
purpose and values it’s tempting to
think of philosophy as a remote
specialized discipline of relevance to
only a few academically minded sorts but
what philosophy really wants from us
which is that we should lead an examined
self-aware life is in truth a basic
necessity for every human being as vital
as water or exercise so much so that if
we don’t regularly do enough philosophy
if we don’t constantly make time to
interrogate ourselves question our plans
explore our talents and think over our
relationships we will pay a very heavy
price will be stripped of the capacity
to carry on our lives with enough rest
in our bones so important to some of the
questions we need to tackle something
within us you might call it an inner
Guardian or conscience prefers that we
should stop deriving all the many
obvious benefits of sleep rather than
leave a raft of existential issues
untreated for much longer
this points the way to an important
solution to insomnia not so much a pill
or a special kind of tea or a long bath
but principally more time in the
reasonable hours of the day for thinking
more time in which there are no demands
on us and we can at last meditate
philosophically that is systematically
examine everything we’re concerned about
sifting through our regrets discussing
our work with our inner critic airing
the tensions of our relationship with
our true selves in short reacquainting
ourselves with ourselves insomnia is
seldom a physical disease it’s an
inarticulate maddening but ultimately
healthy plea released by our core self
that we confront the issues we’ve put
off for too
insomnia isn’t really to do with not
being able to sleep it’s about not having given ourselves a chance to think