Napping

                                   

  For me, there is a time during the day when my brain is telling me to close my eyes, lay down, and give my ability to reason a rest; it is nap time. Napping, as an activity, is even more necessary to me than vacationing, relaxing and dining. In fact, it is the prerequisite for making these other activities enjoyable. It is the nucleus which holds the pleasurable aspects of the world I exist in together.
   Usually beginning around two in the afternoon, I start to get a little cranky, I grow impatient with the people and things around me, and I long for escape and rejuvenation....but mostly escape. There was a time, what seems like a lifetime ago, when drugs or alcohol seemed the logical way to avoid having to exist consciously during all those waking hours. But now that I am older, and those solutions don't work like I'd like them to, I've returned to my original love; the nap.
   I remember growing up and watching my father nap on the days when he didn't work, of the peaceful look on his face, and recall how refreshed and better spirited he appeared when he woke up. It was clear the benefits he received from this rest time, yet he seemed so weak in some way to me, needing to do that as he did. As a person in my early teen years, it seemed like he was wasting so much time; now, it seems more like a way to die temporarily, and when I think of it in that way, it just sounds so great.
   It often feels like I never give my brain a rest, endlessly using it to assess, calculate and recalculate. It seems so overworked. A friend of mine used to say, albeit jokingly, that the only way to really rest on a vacation was to be on life support. I think that kind of gets to the root of it for me.

   Above, is a PET scan of a brain during sleep deprivation.