To a surprising, and almost humiliating extent, some of the gravest problems we face during
a day can be traced back to a brutally simple fact: that we have not had enough sleep the
night before. The idea sounds profoundly offensive. There are surely greater issues than tiredness.
We are likely to be up against genuine hurdles: the economic situation, politics, problems
at work, tensions in our relationship, the family… These are true difficulties. But
what we often fail to appreciate is the extent to which our ability to confront them with
courage and resilience is dependent on a range of distinctly ‘small’ or ‘low’ factors:
what our blood sugar level is like, when we last had a proper hug from someone, how much
water we’ve drunk – and how many hours we’ve rested. We tend to resist such analyses
of our troubles. It can feel like an insult to our rational, adult dignity to think that
our sense of gloom might in the end stem, centrally, from exhaustion. We’d sooner
identify ourselves as up against an existential or socio-cultural crisis than see ourselves
as sleep-deprived. Yet we should be careful of under- but also of over-intellectualising.
To be happy, we require large serious things (money, freedom, love), but we need a lot
of semi-insultingly little things too (a good diet, hugs, rest). Anyone who has ever looked
after babies knows this well. When life becomes too much for them, it is almost always because
they are tired, thirsty or hungry. With this in mind, it should be no insult to insist
that we never adopt a truly tragic stance until we have first investigated whether we
need to have an orange juice or lie down for a while. Probably as a hangover from childhood,
‘staying up late’ feels a little glamorous and even exciting; late at night is when (in
theory) the most fascinating things happen. But in a wiser culture than our own, some
of the most revered people in the land would – on a regular basis – be shown taking
to bed early. There’d be competitions highlighting sensible bedtimes. We’d be reminded of the
pleasures of being in bed when the last of the evening light still lingers in the sky.
Our problems would not thereby disappear, but our strength to confront them would
at points critically increase.
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