D. K. Wall 0:00
I've mentioned before that I suffer from chronic insomnia. Not the kind where I toss and turn for hours before falling asleep. No, when my head hits the pillow around nine or 9: 30, party animal that I am, I'm out cold despite my grand ambitions of reading a few chapters. Most nights, I barely survive a few pages, but somewhere in the middle of the night, more often than not, my eyes flutter open. Not for a bathroom trip, though that might play a supporting role. No, I wake up alert, mind whirring with thoughts, solving the problems of the day, or, more often, weaving some elaborate tale in my imagination. That might be a bonus for you, dear reader, but it's not great for me. Fellow sufferers know that this form of sleeplessness has a name, sleep maintenance insomnia, the inability to stay asleep through the night. I've tried all the usual tactics, ruled out various medical issues, avoided blue light, darkened my room, adjusted temperatures. None of them changed my sleeping habits. Fortunately, I've discovered I will return to sleep an hour or two after waking if I simply don't focus too hard on trying to return to slumber. Rather than fight it, my best approach is to read a few chapters of whatever book is on my bedside table. As I become engrossed in the tale, my mind will settle and sleep will eventually return. One recent night, as I read a book about olden times, I stumbled across a curious idea: biphasic sleep. Two sleeps. It turns out, wakefulness in the middle of the night is nothing new. In fact, it's ancient and considered normal for millennia. Animals, for example, often practice polyphasic sleep, with naps scattered throughout the day. I need look no further than my faithful canine companions. They snooze like it's their full-time job. Wild animals, with less cushy existences, follow the same sleep patterns. Waking frequently is good for hunting, and to avoid being hunted. And we humans? Turns out we've long practiced biphasic sleep. Some cultures still do. Take the siesta, for example. In warm climates, where afternoon work is punishing, people sleep during the hottest hours and resume life once the sun eases up. With longer hours of daylight near the equator, there is plenty of time to get work done around a midday nap. But in the shorter days, of the colder, darker regions further from the equator, taking time from the day to sleep isn't efficient. Instead, long before electric lights rewired our lives, people went to bed shortly after nightfall, after working throughout the day. No reason to stay awake. No tiktok. No doom-scrolling on Facebook. No Netflix. And for many, no books. Candles were pricey. Fires gave off flickering shadows, not cozy reading light. Most folks couldn't read anyway. Then sometime, around midnight, they woke. Nature may have prompted them. Bladders don't care about REM cycles, but instead of rolling over and forcing themselves back to sleep, they got up. For an hour or two, they were fully awake. They stoked fires, checked on livestock, scared critters out of the crops, some prayed, some visited neighbors, and let's be blunt, some got frisky. Let's just say a lot of babies were conceived during second sleep prep. When I read Mason Curry's fascinating book, Daily Rituals, about the daily habits of some of the greatest creators in history, one thing stood out: a not insignificant number of them created in the middle of the night. Artists like Kafka, Van Gogh, and Picasso were night owls in the truest sense, doing their best work under moonlight. It turns out that many folks used that midnight wakefulness to write, paint, compose, or sculpt. After an hour or two of tackling whatever activities they needed to accomplish, people would crawl back under their quilts for their second sleep. They would wake at dawn, well rested despite the break in sleep, and go about their daily chores. So what changed? Why did we move away from our nocturnal activities? Electricity, for one. Artificial light let us stretch the day long past sunset. The addition of TVs, computers, and phones increased the available distractions. The industrial revolution played a role. Factory whistles and time clocks demanded a structured day. We had to sleep in one tidy chunk, so we were ready for our workday shift. We worried about what hour it was, so we added clocks in every room, and even in our cars. We strapped watches on our wrists and carried our clogged calendars with us. We even invented daylight saving time, to manage the effects of the shifting sun. Over time, we forgot the benefits of a break in our rest. We folded our two sleeps into one. Eight hours a night became the gold standard, and anything less, or anything broken up, was labeled a disorder. But maybe it's not a disorder at all. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not an insomniac. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. A relic of a time when two sleeps was the norm. When the witching hour wasn't something to fear, but a quiet space to think, read, reflect, or write a musing like this one. So next time I wake in the middle of the night, maybe it's because I heard my ancestors whispering through the ages, get up. You're in the middle of your two sleeps. Sleep on that thought, or better yet, don't.
