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Pose and Repose

The Quotidians

By Gerard DiLeoPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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Pose and Repose
Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

In the state of nature when the sense of hunger is appeased by the stimulus of agreeable food, the business of the day is over, and the human savage is at peace with the world, he then exerts little attention to external objects, pleasing reveries of imagination succeed, and at length sleep is the result: till the nourishment which he has procured is carried over every part of the system to repair the injuries of action, and he awakens with fresh vigour, and feels a renewal of his sense of hunger. --Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, 1794

Do you think it's a coincidence that the menstrual cycle follows the lunar months, or that fatigue from the day accrues until sleep comes at night? Do you think, as humans, our circadian rhythms governing the rise and fall of our daily hormones evolved independently of a planet rotating on an axis? Or that the seasonal impact upon our moods has nothing to do with the 23.44-degree tilt of that axis which is the aftermath of a threesome collision among our planet, our moon, and an interloper?

While best-selling books say women are from Venus and men are from Mars, the reality of our existence is that we are all from Earth. Most of this is invisible to us, long assimilated into our subconscious as the way we are, from the moment we crawled out of the murk.

What we are, however, is so much more than bags of chemicals and electricity dancing among our cells and neurons; for beyond that, the will emerges for a purpose in life.

One annual example of such will is the desire to do some personal housekeeping--to seek self-improvement, discard beliefs, habits, and even people who can't do us any good, and to adopt, anew, principles and caveats that will make the new year better than the last.

Could any New Year's resolution be more important than one that buoys our survival and continuity?

Specifically, I cite the resolution to get better sleep, but forgive me if I call it ridiculous, because no behavior of such importance should be just a good idea--it is a mandate! It is ridiculous because it is summoned to our new year t0-do list as if it were an afterthought, like having a resolution to not be eaten by a tiger or not get hit by a bus; or a resolution to digest our food or think our thoughts.

Sleep, thanks to the moon and the Earth and the axis and a consortium of countless other things, are a part of us as much as birth and death. Try going without it for any substantial period of time. Do you fall into that group of people who feel they could get that much more done if they could just skip the sleep?

This is a fallacy, as anyone who has kept him-/herself awake artificially could tell you. Sleep is as much a part of us as being either women or men, Venus and Mars notwithstanding.

The human brain is as busy during sleep as it is during the day. Memories are addressed--some too unimportant to be kept, others important enough to lay down in groups of neurons in our hippocampus. During sleep, our memories are consolidated and prioritized to become part of who we are.

If you step over a mud puddle one morning, but after lunch some stranger runs up to you and slugs you, that night the mud puddle gets discarded but the stranger's punch is cemented into prime memory real estate. This is part of our survival evolution. Stepping over that next mud puddle, while advantageous, will likely be no big deal and forgettable again; but if you again see that same guy who assaulted you , your actions will be based on what was laid down in the don't-let-this-happen-again section of your mind.

As we live and grow, we accumulate memories that guide our lives, and this process goes awry if good sleep habits are not developed. Such habits are called "sleep hygiene," and they are more than just habits--they are maintenance of the machine as much as eating food or drinking water or thinking thoughts.

While our neurons make us go, they are more than just on-off switches. This is because they are governed by another type of brain cell, called glia. Glia cells occupy positions at the synapses of cells and regulate the synapses so that they adjust the actual actions. In a way, you should think of every synapse as a triple-celled device consisting of two neurons and one glia cell, the glia creating a Goldilocks moment--"just right"--for signals passing through your brain.

At night, as part of the immune system, the glia declutter the chemicals of the day's biology--especially in the mind--and discard them through a recently-discovered lymphatic refuse system; that is, as per Darwin, "to repair the injuries of action." Without sleep, this detoxification process does not occur. As such, memory is faulty, which warns against the strategy to pull an all-nighter, cramming for finals. But also the entire circadian rhythm becomes a mess, impacting the immune system, heart health, and other detoxification processes (liver and kidney) negatively. Poor sleep shortens life expectancy--and your memory ain't that good, neither!

The fact that good sleep is not just a good idea, but crucial to health and well-being, is what makes making it a resolution, to check off your list, ridiculous. What would make for a legitimate resolution, however, is an appreciation for sleep as the other part of your body--as important as what you do during the daytime.

New Year's Resolution: I will accept that sleep is not a waste of time but an investment in the other half of my body, and that treating it as a nuisance is as illogical as considering the right half of my body separable from the left half. Sleep is the other part of me--my other self without whom I cannot be me.

A resolution is a temporary adjustment, but the one above should be your life-adjustment, ingrained into your personna as intuitive; it should go without saying--or resolving.

Yes, today's world has come a long way from the times of hunting-gathering and the days when dusk meant bedtime. There is nightlife, entertainment, homework, dating, and many other things that have added to our prior caveman schedules. Luckily, we've evolved big brains to fine-tune our rhythms. Nevertheless, the one commission to which our species should commit is to retire at the same time and begin our day at the same time--every day. This is what your body wants, and you should be forthcoming.

You should "pose" during the day, with your intentional actions; but you should "repose" when your world turns away from that fireball in the sky. You can wake up and smell the coffee, best, when you fall asleep amid the nocturnal sounds of the other half of the world.

If you want to improve yourself, you first have to assume your rightful place in the wake-sleep rhythm your body has evolved for optimal function.

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About the Creator

Gerard DiLeo

Retired, not tired. In Life Phase II: Living and writing from a decommissioned Catholic church in Hull, MA. Phase I: was New Orleans (and everything that entails).

https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/

email: [email protected]

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