One Man's Ever-Going Quest For That Elusive Goal Of Ample Sleep

One man’s ever-going quest for that elusive goal of ample sleep.

- Wayne Cheong

First, let us acknowledge that sleep is good. It is essential, although scientists do not rightly know why; along with ‘how does a moving bicycle stay upright?’ and ‘why do we yawn?’, this is a mystery that science still can’t explain yet. Some purported that sleeping places the body into a ‘restorative stage’—cortisol levels lower; growth hormone is released by the pituitary gland; your immune system lets loose cytokines that fight infections, and so on.

In a painting called ‘The Nightmare’ by Henry Fuseli, a woman is asleep on the bed while an ape-like creature —an incubus—sits on her stomach, and a horse (or a mare, if you will) looks on. These interlopers are the titular nightmares, but these days nightmares take on the more accurate current representation of the plagues of modern living.

There’s this persistent sentiment, that upwardly mobile ethos of ‘sleeping less and doing more’. We look to the sleeping habits of highly successful people like Indra Nooyi, chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, who sleeps five hours a day; and talk show host Steve Harvey who espouses that if you want to be rich, you’ll need to sleep less. People see sleep as a trade-offfor success.