Writing Prompt: If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

I’d hate it. I love sleep so much. More accurately, I love the rituals of getting ready to sleep. I love the warmth and coziness of settling in between the covers. I just love the feeling of becoming warm and drowsy and drifting off into sleep.

Settling into that netherworld between the world of being awake and sleeping is seductive. It might be some weird psychological undertone about returning to the womb. But likely not. I don’t have particularly strong memories of being in the womb and the thought doesn’t much appeal to me.

I also enjoy dreaming. I love the topsy-turviness of dreams and how sometimes they confuse the hell out of me. At other times, my dreams work out some strange plot line with people I know or knew well at one time. Those people might do something in a dream I could never imagine them doing in real life.

They might reveal a hidden talent. They might shout in public or otherwise speak up assertively when we know them as mostly shy and reserved in daily life. I am most intrigued by those dreams which feel so real I feel trapped in them.

They push me to frantically work out solutions in my head about how I am going to manage a situation. Only to wake up to find it was all an elaborate fiction that almost instantly disappears.

Those kind of dreams can shake me up. It is as if the veil between reality and whatever the dream-state is diaphanous and almost transparent. Where does that world go when we wake up? And why is it so hard to recall the details of our dreams?

I’ve tried dream journalling. It never quite catches the complexity and nuance that a dream scenario presents. I am sure that is partly because dreams can evoke a range of emotions while they are unfolding with speed and meaning and nuance that are difficult to capture on paper.

But if I really didn’t need sleep, what would I do with all the extra time? Likely, nothing. I would do a lot more of nothing. I would sit more often in a forest on chunks of soft moss. I would listen to the forest sounds. I would watch insects and small animals doing what insects and small animals habitually do. I would deeply breathe in the fresh air surrounding me.

I would do this in an effort to transition away from my very important, very urgent real-world demands. I am held in sway daily like most adults by financial, physical, people and environmental obligations. I would like to let go of a lot of these demands without the bottom falling out of my life.

It is a delusion to believe more time would help me get more on top of my responsibilities. I let go of that fantasy a long time ago. The most efficient among us get everything they need to do done in the time allotted.

I hate those people.

The fault, it would seem, might be in me.

So while it is that I must sleep to get through my days, I am not sure more time would change my life dramatically. I think the secret to making my life richer or more efficient or meaningful or whatever emotional state it is I am going for, must be accomplished within the time parameters I’ve been given.

That is both the tragedy and the beauty of life. Just like everyone else, I have to figure out what to do with the precious amount of time I’ve been given.

Think I’ll sleep on that tonight.