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====== Anxiety Dream - Miya Tokumitsu ======

Created Wednesday 28 June 2017

A 1626 Dutch print a tender domestic scene:

a father in his nightdress walks to and fro, soothing a wakeful baby while mom gets
some well-deserved sleep.

The accompanying verse is equally sweet, assuring us that God, like this kindly
father, will comfort us when we become gripped with anxiety and cry out in the
night.

But when we wake today, heart pounding at the recollection that we have a big
presentation in six hours, many of us might find a last-minute cancellation more
conducive to recovering sleep that the idea of a loving God who cradles and sings
to us.

Adding to our anxiety is the knowledge that the loss of every minute is setting us
back.

There seems hardly to be sleep enough to go around, much less to share with our
loved ones.

We know the stats:

most Americans sleep a paltry 6.8 hours per night, less than the recommended eight
hours.

The litany of sleep deprivation consequences is also familiar:

[litany — noun
a long list of problems, excuses etc – used to show disapproval
litany of
an endless litany of complaints
2 a long prayer in the Christian Church in which the priest says a
sentence and the people reply.]

obesity, depression, anxiety, loss of libido, and heart disease, among others.

We also instinctively understand that we have a stake in each other's sleep.

In addition to immediate hazards, like overtired drivers taking the wheel or

bleary-eyed colleagues gumming up our beautiful spreadsheets, we know that
widespread depression and worn-out immune systems affect society broadly, and over
the long term.
[bleary — adjective
unable to see very clearly, because you are tired or have been crying:
Steve emerged from his room, unshaven and bleary-eyed.

1. Watery, filmy, or unable to see clearly: bleary eyes.

2. Tired, disoriented, or bleary-eyed: He shuffled around the kitchen, bleary
with sleep.
3. Vaguely outlined; indistinct: "The Palisades are wan and bleary with heat"
(Clement Greenberg).]
[gum up — phrasal verb
Phrasal Verb:
gum up
 To ruin or bungle: gum up the works.
[bungle — verb tr, verb intr., noun
v.tr.
To carry out badly or ruin through ineptitude; botch. See
Synonyms at botch.
v.intr.
To work or act ineptly or inefficiently.
n.
A clumsy or inept performance; a botch: made a bungle of
the case due to inexperience.]

And yet we often understand our sleep in terms of pure individual choice.

For that reason, wilful sleep deprivation remains a cultural ideal.

This you-snooze-you-loose mindset was recently captured by internet-marketplace

Fiverr's advertisement poseter, which, alarm-like, blared "SLEEP DEPRIVATION IS YOU
DRUG OF CHOICE . . . YOU MIGHT BE A DOER."

After all, what is the condition of sleep, if not an absence of motivation to chase
the $5 gigs the company peddles?

In this same vein, a 2012 //Bussiness Insider //slideshow fawned over "19
Successful People Who Barely Sleep."
[fawn — intr verb
to exhibit affection or attempt to please, as a dog does by wagging its
tail, whining, or cringing.
2. To seek favor or attention by flattery and obsequious behavior.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! CEO, got pride of place as slide number one.

Slide number threee was Donald Trump.

An equally individualistic pro-sleep discourse does exist, primarily in

click-bait articles nestled within chum boxes, which limply scold us for watching
Netflix in bed.

Entering this soporific terrain, sleep-evangelist Arianna Huffington urges readers

of her book, //The Sleep Revolution, //to sleep more, prescribing rituals to
maximize its quality, including pre-bedtime soaks with Epsom salts, and counting
one's blessings.

As without our wakefulness, our slumber too is motivated and shaped by

anxiety.

Those who do protect their eight hours often do so because it helps them perform
better at work.

It's no wonder that Huffington, a boss, approves fo this motivation for sleep,
writing, "It would actually be better for business if employees called in tired,
got a little more sleep, and the cam in a bit late, rather than call in sick a few
days later or, worse, show up sick, draggin themselves through the day while
infecting others."

It may appear that as a society we have conflicting sleep ideals, but really,
we're not so much of two minds as we are fumbling around, trying to work out the
role that sleep plays in a prosperous life.

We want to get sleep right because we know that doing so is essential to thriving
individually — indeed, Thrive is the name of Huffington chose for her wellness
company — but we fret over the quantity, preparatory rites, and timing of our sleep
because sleep lies at the juncture between the private and the social, the
biological, and cultural.

Sleep is intensively private:

where, when, with (and without) whom, and how we dress and prepare for sleep are
intimate and emotional decisions.

But sleep is also social:

we modify our behavior and expectation on the assumptions that those beyond our
immediate domiciles — neighbors, colleagues both local and time zones away — are
sumbering at certain hours.

And although sleep is private, we do want social reassurance that we are sleeping
the right way and look down upon those who choose other arrangenments.

Just mosey over to the comment section of any website discussing infant sleep, and
you'll find accusations of "baby torture," and remarks like, "You may think you are
fine, but no. You did hurt your baby."
[mosey — intr verb
1. To move in a leisurely, relaxed way; saunter: moseyed over to the club
after lunch.
2. To get going; move along.]
Just as eating habits often fome with a moral or ethical motivations that imply —
or outright state — the absence of such morals and ethics of those who eat
differently, sleep helps constitute our identity, something we generally like to
have affirmed.

Enter the market.

The are seemingly endless ways to buy yourself some sleep-books like Huffington's,
herbal teas, white noise machines, Ambien, melatonin, ear plughs tucked into
earplug cases, therapy.

And if you want to put sleep off — stimulants from espresso to cocaine, late night
TV, alarms, gyms that open at 5 am.

Contrary to Huffington's claim to revolutionary momentousness, it seems

someone's always been around to sell sleep optimization.

Historian Sasha Handley writes in her book //sleep in Early Modern England //that
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the panoply of goods deemed ideal for
proper sleep by Brits counted breathable bed linens, thermometer to help maintain
ideal room temperatures, bedclothes including nightcaps and nightcap liners, even
ventilators.

"No other daily activity was so heavily goberned by principles fo good health,"
Handley writes, "nor consumed as much time, money, and labour as did sleep."

Yesterday's silver-gilt ventilator has today become a whole range of electronic

devices to track your sleep and analyze which components of your psyche and
environment need correction.

We may scream at each other over the "correct" way to sleep, buth the truth
is that where we come down on these questions — and, indeed, whether we even have a
choice at all — is largely a matter of our financial resources and anxieties.
As with parenting, there are multitudinous dictums competing over how to //do sleep
right, //but few resources to actually achieve our cultural ideals.

For well-to-do families, whether to co-sleep with babies may be a considered

choice.

No such luck for households that cannot afford a bassinet or crib.

Coffee-fuelled all-nighters are technically a choice, but usually one coerced by

negative economic consequences for missing a deadline.

And what can Huffington say to readers who don't have a bathtub or even a private
bedroom from which to banish their phone?