When is the last time that I remember getting an entire week of solid, eight-hour sleep?
That is the question I found myself asking, recently – and the answer I produced, to myself, was, “I don’t know.”
For something that has been battered into the back of our minds in PSHE sessions, school assemblies, and other well-meaning, yet often unhelpful, sources of advice, it seems we forget about it all the time - we need sleep.
It must be conceded that our lives, in the modern world, are full of stress and pressures, that can seem overwhelming at times and chip away at our health without us even being conscious of how much they truly are harming us.
It is difficult to sleep as much as we would like to – for some of us twenty-four hours isn’t enough– but it is possible to get enough sleep.
One afternoon, I had sat down after school and realised that I spend quite a long time on my phone before bed, not really doing anything except scrolling, without even enjoying it.
This made me conclude that I had control over at least some of the time that I could be sleeping, which I was spending doing something else when I should have been asleep, or delaying when I actually go to sleep.
Thus, rather than complaining about how busy I am, I could just stop wasting time.
I asked some of my friends at school, over the following fortnight, questions related to sleep, to gauge to what extent others were also getting insufficient sleep, and whether they had any control over this.
“Did you get much sleep last night?”
This received the usual “no”, “not enough”, “I had homework”, etc.
And when elaborating, they all seemed to place the blame on procrastination, or their phones – exactly like myself.
So, on realising something, that I should have realised much sooner, I resolved to go a week, getting at least eight hours of sleep each day.
Summary of the experience:
Above all else, sleep seemed to just make things easier. It provided me with a sense of lightness, throughout the whole week, and motivation, which made the week go by quicker, and I really was able to concentrate and engage, in school, much more effectively.
I can’t to believe it, but the PSHE lessons, and assemblies, were right all along.
Conclusion:
The Reels must stop. It’s easy to complain about the pressures of modernity, when we’re engaging with its vices willingly.
I found it very difficult to keep up - I'm not entirely certain how long I will manage to maintain it going forwards, but I will try to keep going for as long as I can.
And if I can do it then...
I encourage readers to examine how they spend their own time, with complete scrutiny, because where time is wasted, time for sleep is wasted.
And sleep is necessary.
