Discovering the Interplay Between Sleep and Happiness
October 9, 2024
Credit: Pinterest
Writer: Jane Hamilton
Editor: Dani Eder, Kate Shapiro, & Ava Malkin
In Kindergarten, my parents enforced a bedtime of 7:30 pm each night. I always resented them for it. Yet, each morning, after nearly 11 hours of rest, I sprang from my bed with an overwhelming sense of excitement— an almost impatience to start my day. I found myself wishing the day could be longer, filled with more hours of play and less rest. I seemed to love every aspect of life unconditionally. Ironically, the one thing I resented most, my bedtime, was the one thing in which my love of life was conditioned.
Although this feels like a profound oversimplification of what it's like to be a kid, in many ways, I think it all really is this simple. As children, we adhere to the strictly regimented schedule our parents put in place for us. We subconsciously know they have our best interests at heart, yet we resent the rules and restrictions they impose upon us. We can’t wait to grow up, eagerly awaiting the day we finally have the freedom to choose how we spend our time.
As a kid, I firmly believed I would one day choose to spend my free time doing the things that made me happiest—running outside, reading, spending time with my friends and family, and singing and dancing without inhibition. However, somewhere along the way, pursuing happiness went from my daily intention to merely an afterthought. The more independence I was given, the less my intentions guided me to be able to depend on myself.
When I entered my sophomore year of high school, I felt there weren’t enough hours in the day to get all my work done. The truth was, there were enough hours in the day to get everything done, just not while adhering to my excessively thorough study process. I refused to accept this reality. Rather than reducing the amount of work I had created for myself, I found a way to create more hours in the day by ‘borrowing’ them from the night. The problem with borrowing something is that there is the expectation that it will be returned, yet I had no intention of returning these borrowed hours of sleep. I woke up each morning in agony, feeling nauseous and fatigued, fighting my body’s need to stay asleep for longer. I would go to school, appearing to function normally on 2-5 hours of sleep.
At the time, I only thought about what I needed to do before I could sleep rather than what sleep would enable me to do. As full of life I appeared on the outside, I felt empty on the inside. As obvious as it seems now, I failed to recognize how closely connected my emptiness and unhappiness were to my lack of sleep. Although I refused to admit it, my exhausted brain could not function on the same level as my well-rested brain. To overcompensate for this deficit, I would stay up later, spending more hours working less-efficiently. All throughout high school, I was so afraid of the consequences of not giving my all, that I drained myself to the point where I had less to give.
Although in high school I had been independent enough to choose a bedtime (or lack thereof), I was still dependent on the people and place I called home all my life in more ways than I realized. When I got to college, independence became mandatory. I quickly realized that in order to be independent, I had to be able to depend on myself, and in order to be able to depend on myself, I had to be able to take care of myself.
Spending the past two years repairing my deeply ruptured relationship with sleep has transformed how I approach each day. I no longer merely exist with the intention of maximizing the productivity of every moment. Instead, I live with the intention of creating a life that makes me truly excited to wake up each morning. That excitement is mere disillusionment if not accompanied by a commitment to rest and the recognition that sleep is not a symbol of giving up nor an admission of defeat, but an essential act of self-care.
Perhaps my five year old self had it right– the key to a happy life is not simply having the freedom to choose how we spend our time but choosing to spend it doing what fulfills us most. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned that true independence is not merely the power to manage our own time, but the wisdom to prioritize self-care within that time.
