Sleep Deprivation - Finding our energy

Lack of sleep, or good sleep, has horrible effects on human beings.  The common, and sometimes unavoidable, late night and early wake up cannot compare, or even approach, the debilitating and punishing results of regular sleep deprivation.  I have seen these results in two people whom I know well.  One has suffered many years from the after-effects of an auto collision in a parking lot.  Progressive nerve damage and other injuries interfere with his sleep and he often falls asleep sitting in a chair or at the table.  The deprivation has blunted his thinking and memory.  He tries to stay positive, but he lives a constant struggle.  The other is a family-friend who has a ‘nocturnal’ child, a child who cannot seem to stay asleep through the night and wakes her up multiple times a night.  The interrupted sleep prevents a healthy ‘sleep-cycle’ and each morning she describes waking up with heavy bags under her eyes and a generally heavy feeling that makes her job an uncomfortable grind. 

In the opening passages of the Shulchan Aruch, the principal code of Jewish law and practice, there is a teaching that we should stay awake at night and mourn the destruction of the Temple.  Rabbi Yisrael Meir ha’Cohen, known as the Mishnah Berurah, issues caution to those who feel they require more sleep. 

As a person who tends to need good solid sleep to be effective the next day, I always wondered how friends at college could stay up to all hours and then jump into class the next day.  I wondered if somehow I could turn myself into a ‘morning person’ like my older brother who used to get up early to go to swim practice, so early that on the way to the swim club the traffic lights were still blinking yellow.  This change was not meant to be.

It seems that locally, even nationally, we live in a world that feels like a place where people are living without good rest and renewal.  People seem to be constantly on-edge, just like someone who is struggling with sleep deprivation.  With vacations, and general travel, more stressful and expensive, and with wi-fi everywhere, ‘getting away’ is close to impossible, and ‘shutting down’ our connection for more than a Shabbat or holiday-day, if that, in many professional fields, may not be feasible.

We may begin to find some answers within ourselves.  Are we taking the occasional deep breaths to slow-down and take stock of ourselves?  Do we have a chance to do some community service alone, with family, with the synagogue?  Can we carve out a few minutes, even at odd hours, to loosen up our minds with writing, painting, building something, calling up some family or friends to come by for an pot-luck Shabbat meal? 

As the wise writer of the ancient poem, psalm 118, taught us, “Zeh hayom Asah Hashem, nagilah venismechah vo,” no matter how much, or little, sleep we’re running on, today is a day God created, let’s be happy and celebrate it…at least for a while, then we’ll see if we can squeeze in a power nap.