The Nap

Oasis w/ Stereophonics--"I'm Only Sleeping (live)" (mp3)
Warren Zevon--"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (mp3)

Let's face it. We are a tired society. The ways that we spend our days are guaranteed to overwhelm us. I'm not talking about labor. The times we have to labor physically don't send us to the couch for a nap; they send us to bed early at night. What brings on the need for the nap is human contact--the barrage of questions, requests, second guesses, challenges, confessions, deadlines, presentations, etc.--which make up much of the time we spend working in service industries. And most of us, by now, are in service industries. For most of us, by a certain time during the day, we've had enough. And then we start thinking about the nap. If only we could have that nap.

There are few things more controversial than a nap. Think not? Napping is synonymous with being lazy, with being a slacker, with being unmotivated. Imagine yourself carving out the space for one in the middle of a work day because you know it would be the best thing for you at that moment. Would anyone else who saw you napping agree? Your co-workers? Your bosses? Nope. We live in a world where peer pressure tells us most of the time: You can't nap because no one else is napping. So what if everyone else's ass is dragging, too?

There are few things more irritating than knowing that someone else is sleeping while you are slaving away.

There are few things more blessed than a quick bit of shuteye.

Sometimes I walk around and the only clear knowledge in my head is that I'm spent. My wife will call and say, "I'm spent." I come home and see my children and verify that they, too, have had enough for one day. It is the world we have bought into, literally and figuratively.

If you have the gift of being able to fall asleep quickly and can take advantage of a quick half hour of free time, you have a good chance of waking up from the brief respite refreshed and renewed. I remember my grandfather, who came home for lunch every day, following up his lunch by stretching out on the living room couch and resting his eyes for about 30 minutes or so before heading back to work. Of course, he worked at a lumber company, a lumber company that he owned, so he could stretch that lunch out a bit.

I had an older colleague a few years ago who was much maligned for taking a nap in the afternoon. Maligned by the faculty, at least. I may have even done some of the deriding. He instructed his secretary to hold the phone calls, reschedule any appointments, prevent anyone from intruding. It wasn't a long nap. It was a quick nap, a power nap, as some like to call it. But he did it. I guess he had the balls to say he was doing it and no one was willing to tell him that he couldn't.

Me, I don't have a good office for napping. With a huge fishbowl window and a central location, if someone saw me leaned back in my chair with my eyes closed and my mouth open, they'd probably bust out the defibulator that hangs on the wall next door and call 911. No, for me to grab a little snooze in there, I'd have to lock my door, get down on the nasty carpet, curl up in a fetal position, and wedge myself into the little alcove in front of it. I can only imagine what story the maintenance guy coming in to change one of my overhead lights would tell after that encounter.

The other day I came home from work and, the main floor being full of my children and activity, went down to the cool of the basement and got into the bed for a nap. Bad call. I fell into a deep sleep, and only awakened because a neighborhood boy was delivering a watermelon from his family garden and I could hear his surprising voice and his footsteps above me. I must have fallen into the deepest levels of sleep, because I was disoriented for several hours after that and unmotivated to do much of anything at all. That isn't a nap.

A nap is a glorious thing, constrained by time and obligation. When I do take one, I figure out exactly how much time I need and set a timer, even set it where I can hear it ticking sometimes. The ticking doesn't bother me, nor does the knowledge that I might not be able to fall asleep, nor does the knowledge of what I have to do once the nap is over. If I didn't think I had time for a nap, I wouldn't be taking one. And it is the chance to take a nap as much as the nap itself that matters. Sometimes I just lie there with my eyes closed and do the kind of free-form thinking that we do before we fall asleep and something will catch my interest and I'll jump right up and get to it, or sometimes my body will know how long I needed to nap and I'll start to come out of it before the buzzer jolts me.

A nap is C3PO shutting himself down for quick repairs or an Ipod that just a needs a few minutes of being left in a wall undisturbed so that it can gain enough of a charge to keep going. We're not all that different.

A nap is, those of you with young children are thinking, what the hell is a nap?