Years ago, as a freshman in college, I was required to take a class in cultural anthropology. To help us understand what life in a primitive, stone age culture is like, our professor showed us a documentary of an isolated tribe who lived deep within the heart of some endangered rain forest.
They rose with sun and emerged from their simple huts. In no particular hurry to go anywhere, they dawdled over breakfast, laughing and talking in a language that probably no one else on earth could understand. Once breakfast was over, the tribe began their labors. The women cared for the children and gathered vegetables, nuts, and fruits. The men, meanwhile, prepared darts for their blow guns and discussed the upcoming hunt.
Later in the day, the women prepared some sort of fibrous tuber by pounding it into a white pulp. The men emerged from the forest with some unidentifiable small mammal tied by its legs to a pole. A fire was lit, and the men tended to the roasting of the animal while the women continued to prepare vegetables and starches for the evening meal. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits in anticipation of the roast meat. Speaking in their unknown tongue, the tribe laughed and joked as they feasted on the bounty of the forest. Later, when everyone had their fill, the men produced a giant pipe that looked like it had been fashioned from a hollow branch and half of a coconut, filled it to the brim with the flowering buds of the native hemp plant, and lit it up with a flaming branch from the cooking fire. They passed it to each other while telling the story of the hunt, repacking the giant bowl when it became empty. Huge clouds of thick blue smoke hung about the tribesmen. Everyone looked happy and satisfied.
At this point the narrator cut in to say that for the remainder of the day and night the tribe would continue to tell stories and sing songs before retiring to their huts. He also mentioned that this was a particularly busy day for the tribe; on average, even the most industrious among them only "worked" about twenty hours a week.
Now, I'm not saying I want to live a life like the members of this lost tribe. But I'm pretty sure that the professor's point was that this is the life that most humans lived for thousands of years. It is, in a sense, the life that nature designed us to live. And I'm willing to bet that unless they suffered from some sort of aberrational medical condition, the members of this tribe didn't have any trouble getting a good night's sleep. For that matter, I bet that they didn't suffer from many stress-related conditions, either. In any case, I think about that movie a lot when I'm driving to work after getting a crappy four hours or less of sleep.
Just like most people, I don't have a twenty hour work-week. On most mornings, I'm scrambling to stuff toast and coffee into my face before rushing out the door and fighting the morning traffic on the interstate, which seems to be governed by the same laws as The Road Warrior. And then, as soon as I get to work, it's go, go, go until quitting time. Then, it's another stressful half-hour of Mad Max auditions before I'm home and it's time to catch up on cooking, cleaning, washing, and thinking about getting another, less stressful job.
I'm not a doctor, and there are dozens of websites on the causes and treatments for insomnia. I have no intention of competing with any of them; if you are seeking clinical solutions to your problem, then you can try your luck with Google. Rather, I intend to share this solipsistic account of my experiences with insomnia. And the first point that I would like to make is that it's the unnatural and accelerated pace of the modern world that causes myself and others to toss and turn at night. Certainly it's natural to experience some level of insomnia when you worried about something, but I think that the prolonged bouts of inadequate sleep that many of us suffer from originate from the pitiless institutions that govern our lives and the stress that they impose upon us. As they say, there's no rest for the weary.
So in the future weeks, I invite you to read and to share your own experiences on this blog. Since I can't go join the natives in my professor's documentary (I bet that they've since been displaced by some international lumber conglomeration), I am wide open to any ideas that might bring about a good night's sleep. In the next few weeks, I intend to share my personal experiences with OTC's, prescription medication, various relaxation techniques, and fucked-up anecdotes about insomnia from my the lives of myself and my friends.
In the meantime, pleasant dreams everybody.
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