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Of the three popularly cited pillars of a successful, well-balanced life—Work, Friends, and Sleep—which is the most important? Perhaps that query isn’t framed quite right; the whole concept of balance implies equal significance. To approach the question from a different angle, then, which is abandoned most often? To my eye, Sleep is most frequently neglected. It’s easy to see why: Work and Friends require concrete commitments, and the moment something is scheduled is the moment it registers as an imperative. Rarely do we give Sleep that courtesy. It doesn’t by its nature require the same level of habitual attention. Over the last few years I’ve gotten better at looking at my habits on their own merits, rather than from an outside, ‘objective’ standard. I still hold the door because it’s polite, I say “Please” and “Thank you” as small exercises in compassion. But my private habits, the ones that don’t involve anyone else, I’ve by and large stopped judging them based on what some invisible observer might think. I’m fortunate in my capacity to ignore those absent eyes, though they certainly governed my behavior for years. A recent episode of Hidden Brain, NPR’s psychology podcast, put this into relief for me. A couple weeks ago they reran an old cast called “Creature Comforts,” which considers the power of touch. I’m gonna hit the highlights (so spoiler warning, I guess?), but I highly recommend listening to it yourself. There’s a lot of detail and nuance I’ll be leaving out. Aaaaaaaaaaanyway. The first half of the show deals with blankies, those worn, warm, welcoming shrouds that gave you solace while your tiny toddler body slept. Specifically, it focuses on how, when, and why those childhood relics keep their significance into adult life, which triggered a couple thoughts for me. 1) It reinforced my long-held supposition that nobody ever reaches the Platonic ideal of ‘adulting.’ And 2) I realized that this grand tradition extends farther into the elder echelons than I previously believed. The reporter in the episode, who is married with children, still sleeps with her blankie, and her husband accepts that he’ll never really replace it. In fact, when she’s absent from their bed, he will snuggle up with her blankie. My personal sleeping aid is not an artifact from the archives of my youth. In fact, it isn’t something I ever cuddled with or even paid much attention to until I moved to Chicago and found myself largely alone; it’s a high school graduation gift, a handmade TARDIS pillow from a good friend. It fits my adult body just right, with faultless firmness and fleecy feel, and keeps me company in those long stretches before sleep comes when my mind still buzzes, absorbing whatever extraneous energy courses through my limbs. There are nights when I don’t need it, and there are nights when it’s not enough and I have to play bedtime music as well (always A Winged Victory for the Sullen; check them out for all your relaxation needs). My heart slows, my breathing deepens, and eventually I roll into slumber. It’s wonderful. The latter half of ‘Creature Comforts’ undergirds this social justification with science. The mid-century psychologist Harry Harlow conducted a famous series of experiments with rhesus macaques to explore how physical comfort and physical nourishment are weighed in a hierarchy of needs. Two dummy mothers were used. One provided milk but was a hard, cold wire frame, and the other had no milk but was swathed in warm fleece. He found that the monkeys clung with to the cloth dummy, only visiting the wire mother when they needed to feed. For the first time, the importance of contact comfort was recognized in emotional and mental well-being. The common opinion of blankies and pillows and stuffed animals as childish may be valid, but there’s a distinction between childish and immature. Maturity, in many ways, means welcoming and owning our softer sides, recognizing and accepting what help we require. We all need to constantly evaluate the criteria we use to define what is appropriate; having rules for rules’ sake only needlessly reinforces social hierarchies harmful to those on the bottom. My friend made a damn fine pillow, it’s damn comfy, and I’m done apologizing. The sooner we put this issue to bed, the sooner we all can rest easy; and a good night’s Sleep can be hard to find.
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