Sometimes it may help us if we rise and read some quieting book, not “a thriller.” Such a volume as Thoreau’s “Walden,” or that more modern little volume, “Adventures in Contentment,” by David Grayson, or we may repeat some soothing poem like Tennyson’s “Sweet and Low,” or Burroughs’ “My Own Shall Come to Me” and similar verses.
Any of these will help to relax tension, and put us in a more restful frame of mind, and, as minds differ, so some persons will find books and verses of other sorts to have the desired effect upon them.
When we cannot sleep, to rise, throw back the bed-clothes so as to cool the bed, walk about the room, go to the window and fill the lungs with oxygen often tend to quiet the body and mind. We must learn to know our own needs and to find out each for himself what meets them. To “know thyself” is only the first step to control thyself.
CHAPTER X
“LIGHT” SLEEPERS
He sleeps well who knows not that he sleeps ill.
Publius Syrus (42 B.C.).
Someone may say that such things as stimulation of the mind are simple causes of wakefulness, and so easily overcome that it is hardly necessary to consider them; yet, simple as they are, they frequently make the wakeful one impatient. The more complex causes are really as easily dealt with as these simple ones, when once we have learned to control the mind. Take, for instance, the complaining “light sleeper” who cannot sleep if anybody else makes a noise, or if anything out of the ordinary occurs. He is in a steady state of apprehension lest something will happen to disturb his rest; and generally something does happen. A baby cries, a dog barks, a heavily-laden team lumbers by, an automobile honks, a locomotive shrieks, or a steamer whistles, and sleep forsakes him for the night.
He pronounces anathema on the offending cause; he pities himself for his sensitiveness, at the same time that he almost despises his fellows who are so “dead and unresponsive that they can sleep through such a racket” he suffers at the thought that he may get no more sleep, yet he enjoys the prospect of rehearsing to a sympathizing audience in the morning the tortures of such a delicate organization as his. This sort of sleeplessness is made up of so many contributing causes that it is difficult for any but the most perfectly honest man to decide what makes him so susceptible to noise. But it is undoubtedly true that some of these causes are due to fear, to training, and, most of all, to self-interest.
It is always difficult to make the super-sensitive person realize that his suffering is due chiefly to self-consideration and a desire to control others. It is an undue recognition of one’s own claim upon the very circumstances of life that makes one offer so many surfaces which may be “hurt.” We may be disturbed in our sleep by the ordinary pursuits of our fellows because we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of certain conditions that appeal to us and make for our comfort. We wish to sleep at a certain time, and we should like to regulate all our neighbors so that they, too, should suspend all activities at that same time. We accustom ourselves to quiet; and then insist that we cannot do without it.