Malinda Words: Sleeping well

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 197th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

After a hard fought political battle in an institution was lost, a soldier noticing the crestfallen faces of his comrades-at-arms smiled: ‘I always sleep well after a good fight, regardless of victory or defeat, because I know I have done my best.’

That’s a good ‘sleeping tablet,’ then, isn’t it? Do your best, sleep well. A nice rule of thumb, a good mantra to remember.

On the other hand, consider this: around thirty years ago an observant young man said that no one in this world ever does anything wrong; they believe they are right! Therefore all battles are self-righteous and everyone can get a good night’s sleep on account of having fought the good fight well, to the best of ability and knowledge.

Here’s the problem: it is not everyday that we do battle. Sure, life’s a struggle and there are things to contend with every single day. There are knots to untie and knots to tie, some ropes are greasy and sometimes there’s too much sweat in the fingers and the hand can tremble. If one really wants, anything and everything can be defined as ‘a battle,’ except we don’t usually see it that way. The satisfaction of fighting the good fight as a precursor to a good night’s sleep is not obtained simply because we don’t think of things in fighting terms.

So how do we get a good night’s sleep on non-fighting days? I think the ‘I’ve done the best I could’ line might work. It doesn’t have to be a fight. It’s about surviving. Living. Being. Engagement.

How we make choices and how we act upon the choices made are informed by notions of right and wrong, good and bad, efficiency and inefficiency, profitability and the possibility of loss. The mind is a weighing machine that never rests. When we decide and act, let us not forget, we are not thinking ‘this should earn me a good night’s rest.’ That comes later. However, if good, efficiency, right, profitability etc are obtained by honest effort ‘feel good’ is likely to be an outcome. Feel good and sleep good, one could follow the other.

We fall though. We slip. We trip. We don’t get to the finishing line. Then what?

 Then we have our soldier’s fallback option; we can ask ‘did I do my best?’ We can ask ‘was I honest?’ We can ask ‘is my conscience clear?’ If we get ‘yes,’ ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ then we can sleep easy.

It also depends on not being confused by those two fascinating creatures, ‘What’s within my control’ and ‘What’s beyond my control.’ Get either wrong and you might find that the peace of mind necessary for peaceful sleep is quite elusive.

Of course the ‘what I can do’ may not take you too far. You might stop quite a ways short of ‘far enough.’ That can be disappointing. It’s possible that you just miscalculated potential. You might set out knowing well that the odds were not in your favour and still take on a challenge. We can’t always get it right. We miscalculate the possible. We miscalculate ‘control.’ Disappointment could be the bitter harvest. It stays, stays upon the tongue, corrodes the mind. End result: sleep deprivation.

It is also about correct identification. For example, we could focus on victory (and be disappointed) or simply think of engagement as nothing more and nothing less than the affirmation of a principle. A point needs to be made. Securing objective or not, this is something eminently within our control. Unlike victory, which is not always assured.

This is why we have the phrase, ‘pick your battles.’ And so we let things pass sometimes. Sometimes we make a stand, even if it is likely that we would be swept away by the waves rushing towards us.

We may fall. We get back on our feet. We go to bed. We can still fall asleep and sleep well too, simply because we were not delusional about what was possible, what needed to be done and the importance of protecting conscience.

We are fallible because we aren’t all-knowing and all-seeing. We miscalculate, we get sequences wrong, we slip. We carry aches, pains and bruises to bed. The redeeming factor is what that ‘soldier’ said, more often than not: ‘did my best, now it is time to rest.’

19 August 2023

Sleeping well

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