I have written this part of this article on exactly four hours of sleep, and my friends were impressed.
The very structure of our nation is built upon the trajectory towards more. Work for more work. When success is excavated through competition, you rest or you lie in complacency. Capitalism rewards the sleepless, the conqueror of the day.
This systemic microcosm is implemented even in our educational system. Our fundamental pursuit to be the best, to be rewarded for effort, with no real regulation on the means of such. In high school, students pull all-nighters, common and widely accepted. While often seen as part of the “grind”, we turn a blind eye to the extremity of such an American mindset.
Sleep is not intentionally avoided, but viewed only as simply unnecessary, an obstacle to courageously overcome.
“It rejuvenates you. It gives you energy, it restarts your immune system. I think people take it for granted because they don’t realize the effects of sleep,” Keron Bowman (11), says of the importance of rest.
Other nations do not denote success, but, rather, redefine it. Rest is seen not only as crucial to quality of work, but intrinsically stitched in the fabric of a rewarding life. This serves often in contrast to the American work ethic.
Americans get an average of 426 minutes, or 7.1 hours of sleep each night. While this is technically at the mark necessary for functionality, this is, in fact an average. One in three adults in the United States report not getting enough sleep or rest each day.
Countless studies have been conducted in the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation. In recent years, the very foundation of our mental and physical wellbeing hinges on the amount and quality of sleep we have each night. Increased rates of depression, anxiety, and illness have increased in direct correlation to a decreased sleep.
This commentary is not to degrade our system, nor obfuscate for the sake of making a shocking differential; simply a proposed explanation of a trend.
We push into celestial planes, constantly chasing for the sake of the chase. We stay awake to see the stars. We pull our consciousness into the surreal in the hopes of the promise that a twilight extends our hands further to a heavenly sphere.
To witness the very transition of matter. To perceive is to analyze is to control. Beyond wonder, we hope. Beyond hope, we seize. Dawn breaks over the face of the victorious. The early bird gets the health insurance.
“As Americans, we tend to work really hard each day, and at the end of each day, we really look forward to getting the rest that we need,” Kayla Kroehnke (11) said.
Is it worth it? Does the American Dream exist in sleepless nights? The promise of rest lies just beyond the horizon of deprivation. Shifts worked, obstacles overcome. We lie awake to watch the rock roll back down the hill.
As for now, it exists as a truth. It is woven into our history, and reform lies in the individual.
Whether it is all justified, is not easily said. All we can do is push towards the next day, in the hopes of a tomorrow. There is an agonizing soberness in the haze of a sunset.
In perfect consciousness may we dream.
