A Shock to Our Systems

Do you live where Daylight Saving Time has goneย into effect recently? If so, today you may feel out of sync, sleep-deprived. The loss of even one hour of sleep pushes oneโ€™s biorhythms out of kilter.

 

Whoโ€™s to Blame: Daylight Saving Time

In the wee hours of Sundayย clocks moved forward one hour, delaying sunrise and adding evening daylight. According to one source, a New Zealander proposed the modern idea of DST in 1895. Germany followed in 1916. Many other country since then have followed the spring ahead/fall behind routine, especially since the energy crisis of the 1970s.

The time change has been loved or hated ever since.ย My authorย friend Janet Givens provides a well-researched blog post on the topic. Her research explodes the myth that Daylight Saving Time is supported by farmers.

 

Sleep: A Cure

Medical journals including Psychology Today, often publish articles about sleep or the lack thereof. Such pieces also regularly appear in the table of contents of womenโ€™s magazine and AARP journals.

Literature is replete with references to sleep. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, who has recently murdered King Duncan, knows his sleep will be troubled or interrupted even as he ruefully ticks off its benefits:

โ€œSleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care / The death of each dayโ€™s life, sore labourโ€™s bath / Balm of hurt minds, great natureโ€™s second course, Chief nourisher in lifeโ€™s feast.โ€ Act 2, Scene ii

  • Sleep repairs the unraveled parts of our lives, knits them up.
  • Sleep comes at the end of the day; it looks like a little death.
  • Sleep brings bodily relief from pain as do baths.
  • Sleep refreshes the mind.
  • Sleep is essential to life. We canโ€™t do without it.

In Search of Forty Winks, Patricia Marx comments:

. . . party and then firing the cleanup committee. The New Yorker, February 8, 2016

ย party and then firing the cleanup committee. (The New Yorker, February 8, 2016. pages 56. 57)

 

Ben Franklin and the Bible on Sleep

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.ย ย  ~ Benjamin Franklin

The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.ย ย ย ย  ~ Eccl. 5:1

 

Sleeping Child

Joel sleeping with teddy bear, age 8

Joel sleeping with teddy bear, age 8 or 9

Our son Joel was fast asleep embracing hisย teddy bear knitted by his Great Aunt Ruthie. He may have been dreaming of riding his skate board or playing with match-box cars.ย As a nine-year-old, he was certainly not worrying about caring forย children, the needs ofย aย wife, mortgage payments, or at-work performance.

Wordsworth offers aย philosophicalย perspective on sleep:

Ode: Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth Source: Pinterest

Ode: Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth Source: Pinterest

 

Here isย the first stanza of a nursery rhyme Joelย probably heard before he fell asleep:

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,

Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,

Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,

Are the children in their bed, for it’s past ten o’clock?

 

 

Comments about sleep, advice about getting more of it? ย Your wisdom welcome here. All creatures need down time, even inanimate ones. Note that there is a sleep button on your computer, just above re-start.

 

Answer key to limericks published March 9, 2016ย 

1. lewd

2. dinner

3. divinity

4. weeds