Philosophy of sleep, relaxation & chilling
My working & sleeping today
First day of the Next sale (it’s online too, at next.co.uk, open 6am - 1am). So, today, I worked for over ten hours, in the ladies’ shoes department. Ten!
Such a contrast with the quiet family Christmas a couple of days before, without which who knows if I could have survived today!
When I got home I was exhausted, naturally. I was hungry too. So I snacked quickly then went to bed, even though I really wanted to sit down and have dinner with my mum.
Woke up about an hour ago and felt so much more human again; it’s amazing. I realised, wow, it really does make a massive difference to get enough sleep!
The philosophy behind my experience
Chris Hamilton (one of my lecturers) has an insightful chapter ‘The Need for Sleep’ (in his book Living Philosophy, which you can buy from Amazon.co.uk & from Amazon.com). I was going to summarise it, but upon re-reading it I’ve realised it’s so rich that skimming it would do it no justice. Chris explores literature as well as our experiences of sleep and thoughts about it to discuss the meaning of sleep.
So, from now on, or at least for the next 30 days, I’m doing a new experiment: 8 hours of sleep daily for the next 30 days. I’m very lucky because I can fall asleep almost instantly, so all I need to do is go to bed eight hours before I want to get up. Easy!
More thoughts & feelings about chilling
Thinking about it, many of my friends extol the benefits of relaxing frequently, especially Ibiji & Immy, who seem to imbue their lives with these kind of thoughts about chilling.
Ian & Robert often remind me to relax instead of cramming so much in to my life, and they’re right: Failing to relax leads to stress, which ultimately leads to inefficiency as well as ill health, so cramming is counter-productive.
Help sleeping and relaxing more
Some excellent books that may help you if you’d like to sleep and relax more too.
- Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning & Morality, by Chris Hamilton
- How to be Idle, by Tom Hodgkinson
- Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
« back: Merry Christmas to all
3 responses, Comment or Ping
andrea / ibiji
sweet dreams, sweet kathleen. good, good, good for you. sleep well, be well. love 2 you. and if you can sleep more than 8 hours, enjoy. love, andrea
Dec 28th, 2006
andrea / ibiji
but having said that, remember: do what you want. if you wanna sleep, sleep. if you don’t, don’t. (me, i love to sleep.) do what you want. love, andrea
Dec 28th, 2006
Kathleen
Andrea, thank you, sweetie,
I do indeed love sleeping. Am some point I think I’ll start experimenting with lucid dreaming too - give me something to do whilst I’m unconscious. :)
Ciao,
Kx
Jan 4th, 2007
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