The Author explores a socially charged minefield of complaints and efforts to understand the whats, whys, and hows so we may find more effective resolutions to chronic sleep deprivation in our 21st Century Earth
“Wha…? Hey! Don’t wake me up! Leave me alone. Please!!!” The Author awakes from a short afternoon nap at 17:06 from having to get up at 6:00 after 4.5 hours of sleep, Wednesday 24 February 2021.
Getting up early is an abomination. Abominable! Unless one is a morning lark or a lion chronotype, of course. I’m neither as I’m a night owl. My chronotype is the wolf. We creatures of the night represent about 15% of humanity. Apparently owls and wolves are more creative than larks and lions, hunt better in the evening, but are not as “healthy, wealthy, and wise” as the early birdies. Hey, who and what determines the rules here? See, waking up early for me feels horrid, even painful. Embarrassing as well as our work culture frowns, no, scowls down at people who don’t naturally jump out of bed early and quickly to joyfully pounce upon their jobs.
Societies the world over, especially those disrupted by constant violence including warfare and further perturbed by industrialization and electrification, have nearly destroyed our natural sleep cycles. Electrification and resulting technoeuphorias under capitalism, indeed, under all -isms, has led to fantastical material progress. They’ve also generated nonstop media agitation, addictions to social media and video gaming, and even more online distractions such as celebrity gossip and multiplatform video streaming. One may get obsessed with nonstop global news of faraway local events or constant sports events in play somewhere on this planet. These factors have disturbed all of the chronotypes from their natural Gaian order. This disruption seems to be intensifying as well, altho such perceptions may be skewed by repetitive interruptions of sleep.
Even so, nearly 55% of people are bears, the middle-middle folks, those who prefer to get up “at a reasonable hour” neither “too early” nor “too late.” Bears tend to go to bed at a “reasonable” hour as well. While one can force their sleep and wakening patterns to change per their work and family schedules, such changes do not alter the underlying chronotype. Me, ah, I’m a sleep-deprived wreck. You?
Grew up on a farm where we got up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning if not earlier to be at work by 6 o’clock. Every day. Still had to milk the cows and feed the livestock even on the most sacred holidays. Ditto as a kid when my sibbies and I woke up early to eat breakfast with my family, get ready for school, feed our pets, get on the school bus, and ride 30-45 minutes further to arrive at school before classes began at 8:00 AM. Those kids who got on the bus earlier often spent a full hour on the bus. The afternoon bus rides home, or perhaps team sports, school-based clubs, part-time jobs, and chores left little time for homework and studying before going to bed. There were times when I was in high school I would have football practice at school after class, drive home in a car as the busses have long since left, do homework, engage with my family, do house and yard chores, study, then go up to the barns and do chores. I used to climb up into the barn loft and shovel grain for cow feed over into a big chute at 1 in the morning so whoever feeds the cows about 6:15 or so will have enough grain ready to flow. Then come home and get ready for bed. To get up early the next morning. My siblings had their own responsibilities, too. We were chronically sleep deprived even back when we needed sleep the most.
What’s the point? Doing all of those things even if compelled to wake up “too early” never reformed my circadian rhythms. Sure, I got used to the feeling of waking up before I’m supposed to wake up, of course. Getting used to it, however, never made it easier nor did awakening so early improve my academic or work performance. “Getting used” to anything is merely giving up control. One surrenders to the pressures of society and culture if one is to function well (oh, the irony!) and not be a starving artist, incarcerated, deranged, homeless, or worse.
Nor did any of those “early life trainings” make it any easier for me to wake up years and decades later. See, I’m an owl wolf, yo! Worked other jobs across different careers in my busy life. Most of those required an earlier start. Had children. Babies. Three of them. All girls. Was up all hours of the day and night as needed. Once while juggling two jobs, two kids, and volunteering like a third job my health took a steep tumble. Sleep deprivation wreaked havoc on my health whenever it goes on too long. True when on long-distance outdoor adventure trips, even road trips, I would gradually move toward rising and falling with the Sun. There were so many nights, however, I would get up, unable to sleep a winky tinky wink, and wander about in the dark tripping over roots and rocks as I stared up at the stars. I love gazing out into the Cosmos. Love clouds, too, and watched them move across the blue and the dark. Love watching water, too, standing still, flowing downhill, or whipped into crashing waves. Stars, clouds, and water. All the same, really. Energy in flux. The mind flows, time pauses, and the soul blossoms open larger than any planet.
Nowadays I work outdoor adventure retail with a widely-varying shifts scheduled every day as I move thru my late middle-age years towards old age. Chronic health conditions and multiple injuries over the years, all of them relatively minor or at worst moderate, aggregate pain and take a toll. Makes me afraid of being in my 80s and 90s altho I tell myself I want to live past 100. I’ve too much to do before I go. So much more to explore still! To experience! To create! To serve and give back! I’m not one who stays bored for long as there is always something else to do. So why would I want to die simply because of a chronological number? As long as my body and mind are healthy, my spirit nourished, my community enriched, and my finances plentiful, why would I want to keel over and die? My family continues to expand, new friends are there to meet, there’s pictures to take and books to write and…oh, finances…yeah, maths and money…will it be enough? Sustainable? What about community? My communities? Ours?
All of these things disrupt my sleep, and I work best during the night. Most of everything I do seems better when done in the evening and the early night. Takes me a long time to get going in the morning. Often late for work despite my best efforts not to. Gonna blame that on my addiction to news media. Even before the Internet I engrossed myself in stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers. Oh, I do love to piddle slowly across the kitchen to engage in the rituals of grinding organic, lightly-roasted, golden-brown, whole bean coffee to make a pot of fresh black coffee. As I’m temperature sensitive, I put ice in my coffee to cool it down a bit. Ice tray needs to be refilled and splash water wiped up. I got my body thangs to take care of, a delicious, nutritious breakfast to make, and, oh, my body hurts. My low back and neck shout and moan, my hips ache and groan, my knees yip, my ankles yap, and my feet holler. I’m stiff. Eventually I shake it all loose as I slowly, slowly become unhinged. My brain fog, however, even with strong black coffee and Adderall for my ADHD, takes several hours to lift. My brain fog may last till the middle of the afternoon if I get up at a godawful six o’clock in the morning.
New research emerges we humans used to go to sleep naturally soon after dark only to wake up three to four hours later, stay up for one to two hours, then sleep for another three to four hours. The research also shows having different chronotypes living together was an evolutionary survival mechanism. Different groups of warriors took turns being on guard. Lions took care of the kids in the morning, the wolves hunted at night, the dolphins did…what? And bears probably held it all together. Meanwhile the explosion of art created by torchlight as well as crafts by sunlight led to an expansion of culture in areas as diverse as spirituality and technology. Even so, none of these evolved humans were meant to all be shoehorned and cookie-cuttered into the same routine. We should instead play to our strengths. Turn loose the musicians and the search and rescue people into the night! Turn loose the bakers and the baristas into the dawn! Turn loose the bears! Bring back the siesta!
This isn’t, by the way, simply me grumping. I’m well aware there are parts of the planet where Homo sapiens is worse off. I could be in North Korea or the eastern Congo or getting up way early in Antartica to go outside in a fierce storm to manually check on a malfunctioning instrument. Rather it’s an admission, a confession, an acknowledgement of a Certain Way I Am. Even as a teenager when I had to get up early in the mornings on the weekend to help milk the cows and feed the calves I would stay up well past midnight the nights before watching old black-and-white sci-fi monster movies. These days I love to stream movies and binge shows late at night. Or stay up late reading books back when I didn’t have a television or access to the internet. I am in acceptance and surrender to being an owl and a wolf.
Yes, acceptance. Even tho I dislike the way our natural sleep cycles often are ridiculed and dismissed by those who dominate the workaday work culture we all abide within. If I didn’t accept things prior to seeking change then I would succumb to feeling resentful and combative when I’d rather be a jolly ol’ lover scholar midnight warrior. One of my totem animals is the Bull, a minotaur, actually, for I am a stubborn Taurus. Another is the werewolf. Strange to identify with two misunderstood creatures of the dark, isn’t it? Another one I identify with is the phoenix, the mythical bird who rises more powerful than ever from fire and ash. These symbols resonate on a deep, psychospiritual level for me.
Betty, my first lover, was a larky lion. Margaret, my first wife, was an owly wolf just like me. She was a Taurus, too! We seemed a perfect fit while we lasted. She hated it, however, when I used to make myself go to bed early at 20:00 to get up at 4:30 in the morning. Gwendolyn, my second wife, was more of a morning lark, a lioness. She couldn’t stand laying around in bed just to lay around in bed. Gwen was a hopper! A hopper upper! An up and at ‘em kinda gal! Didn’t help she was a busy Virgo, either. Tho she hated it when my alarm, a bare 100-watt lightbulb overhead plugged into a timer below, went off with a blinding blast of light when I was the one who had to wake up even earlier for work. Eventually she made me “retire” the bulb on a timer and she woke me up herself if I had to get up before her for work. Eventually I learned there were pillow thumpers available with alarm clocks for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people. Getting one solved the problem.
Kristina, my third wife, was a bear. One of her nicknames earned during a seminar was Mama Bear. Kristina was also a Scorpio, too, on the opposite side of the Zodiac from me. Was supposed to be a perfect match, we were at times, and still things eventually fell apart. Hey, life is messy! There were other lovers, too, here and there, and most of them seemed to be either bears or wolves. Maybe one was a morning lark, but hard to tell as we didn’t live together.
Faithlyn, my current partner in love and life, one who is a living example of the “OMG, where were you all these many years and decades?” dream type of mate, is nevertheless a gosh darn larky lion. She is, however, a lovely larky lion, and a Gemini, too! Nothing is supposed to work between us, and yet we seem to work together so amazingly well. Probably because we’re lots older, wiser, and mellower. Not so young and dreamy any longer. We’ve learned to give people including each other some pace-and-space as relationships ebb and flow and swirl about as smoke over a fire and a river between its banks. We allow our love its own life to breathe.
Once upon a long time ago now two of my long-distance hiker buddies, a married couple, used to quarrel over what time to wake up and hike and what time to slip into their sleeping bags and sleep. The man kept wanting to pop up at 4 or 5 in the morning and charge down the trail. They had a long ways to go, many, many miles, well over 20 and sometimes 30 or more a day, so let’s go, let’s go, let’s go before it gets too hot! She would growl at him not to wake her up till 8 o’clock, and then it’ll take her a while. She’ll hike late into the evening when it’s cooler and the critters come out, but he wanted to go to bed. Both were perfectly correct. At some point, sad to say, they parted ways after successfully completing their long trails. Yes, sad for them, and also glad for myself my partners and I were not ever so extreme in our chronotypes. Gosh, one of my Seattle housemates was a professional musician, teacher, and videographer/activist. This guy would go to bed around 5 in the morning and wake up sometime in the early afternoon. Extremes abound.
Ahhh, life goes on for the living. Those words haven’t changed. Life is messy. We go and go until we stop. And still life lives. Does life continue beyond bodily death? Does life still “find a way?” How powerful is the mind, really? And the body-mind? Regardless of such matters, however, waking up early in the morning is still an abomination. Maybe not for you. Still is for me. Adios! Amen! Ameen! Tchau, até mais!
The Author about to take an afternoon nap. Sunday 7 March 2021.
William Dudley Bass
Monday 22 February 2021
Sunday 7 March 2021
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Resources on human sleep types:
Duffy, Jill. “Why Six Hours Of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All,” Pocket/Firefox. March 2021. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-six-hours-of-sleep-is-as-bad-as-none-at-all?utm_source=pocket-newtab.
Cline, Dr. John. “Up in the Middle of the Night? It May Be Natural.” Psychology Today, September 2016. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sleepless-in-america/201609/in-the-middle-the-night-it-may-be-natural.
Jackson, Melinda, and Siobhan Banks. “Did we used to have two sleeps rather than one? Should we again?” The Conversation, June 2016. https://theconversation.com/did-we-used-to-have-two-sleeps-rather-than-one-should-we-again-57806.
Ludden, Dr. David. “Are You a Morning Lark or a Night Owl?” Psychology Today, May 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201805/are-you-morning-lark-or-night-owl.
Pacheco, Danielle, with Dr. Anis Rehman. “Chronotypes: How Sleep Works,” The Sleep Foundation. January 2021. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes.
Staff. “Chronotype: Medical Definition of Chronotype,” Merriam-Webster. June 2012. https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/chronotype.
Copyright © 2021 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.