I
t’s one of life’s little ironies: by the time you get old enough to
stay up as late as you want to, you’re too tired to stay up late.
Just about every kid has fought to stay up past bedtime.
You, too? If so, the more tired you became, the harder you no
doubt fought the inevitable.
“But, Mom,” you probably wailed with your last waking breath,
“I’m not sleepy!”
You might as well have gone peacefully. You’ve spent the rest
of your life living by the clock rather than by your inclinations.
Learn to Keep Time to Your Own Rhythms
In the “time before time,” people lived by the natural rhythms of
the day and the season. They got up when the sun rose, worked
and played in the daylight, and went to sleep when the sun went
down again.
But ever since Thomas Alva Edison finally found a filament
that would get hot enough to glow without burning up, we’ve been
able to defy the cycle of the sun, keeping ourselves awake with
artificial light.
We awaken to the clangor of the alarm clock, yanking our-
selves out of sleep rather than allowing ourselves to drift natu-
rally up through the layers of sleep into waking. We hurtle out
of bed and into the day’s obligations, becoming estranged from
our own dreams.
We eat by the clock, too, at “meal time,” when it fits the sched-
ule, or not at all. We combine work with food, to the detriment