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As best as I can remember, whenever I’ve asked myself what I really want from life, the answer has always come back, “I just want to sleep.”
For some bizarre reason, which I’m going to ascribe to social conditioning for now, I’ve never taken this desire seriously. It has never occurred to me, in decades of life, to grant myself this wish.
I’ve known many times in my life where I am desperate for rest, and I’ve looked at the calendar to figure how in how many weeks time it will be before I’m able to have a good chunk of time to do just that. It is a devastating feeling.
I’ve had this idea, I think, that I can rest only once all the things that need doing are done. But that doesn’t hold up. First of all because there is an infinite number of things to be done. And secondly because none of those things actually has the kind of weight they deserve; that is to say that, for example, were I to die tomorrow, none of those undone things would really matter that much — they have a particular salience right now, but in a year’s time most of the things on today’s TODO list are of no importance, whether or not they were actually achieved.
So recently I’ve given myself permission to sleep.
When I want to and when I need to.
