 INSOMNIA
I'm not talking about the type of insomnia that can be
considered a psychiatric illness, but instead about the insomnia that
surrounds us everywhere. "You can see it when you look out your window
or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work"
(if I may borrow some words from Morpheus of "The Matrix").
We've all heard of the ages when the day was the "time of
the living" and the night was the "time of the dead." All of the living
dead in tales and legends appear at night--the vampires, the ghosts, and
so forth. Even being asleep can be and often has been conceived of as a
form of death. An old Greek proverb assumes that "sleep and death are
brothers." In fact, this is an interesting equation between the darkness
in a grave and the darkness at night. But what if your grave doesn't
appear to be all that "dark"?
In fact, "death's little brother" suffers from such a
problem nowadays. The day is the time of the living, that's still true.
But recently, the night has also become the time of the living. To see
the huge gap between our understanding of the concept of the night and
the ancient understanding of it, imagine yourself a farmer living in a
small Mediterranean village. What will you do when the night has fallen,
you're very tired from working in the fields, and you're trapped inside
your house since outside is too dangerous?
The only thing such a person can do in such an environment
is to spend time with family members. However, the things you can do
with them are pretty limited. So, you'll soon be on your own to rest
after the exertions of the day.
Now, let's take a look at our own time: the day is over,
you come home from work or school....Well, night has fallen. But look
what we have here: a street lamp! So, there's no need to stay indoors.
And even if you do stay indoors, you don't have to be bored by the
routine family conversation: you have a TV to watch or a computer to
surf the Web as long as you want.
It doesn't matter what you see when you look at the sky;
even if it's dark, life goes on. There's always a TV program you're
missing while you're asleep. There's always a friend online waiting for
you to show up while you're innocently snoring or murmuring in some
dream. In this century, sleep can be perceived as, in one way or another,
a loss of time.
Once upon a time, people could sleep peacefully because
they knew that everyone else, the whole city was asleep with them. They
knew they could be a part of life in the morning. But that’s not the way
things work anymore: every time we lie down on our beds, the
consciousness that we'll miss something in the time before dawn becomes
like a pushpin on our pillow, which passes through our skull and
disturbs our mind.
Ýsmail O. Postalcýoðlu (POLS/III)
ismail_orhan@yahoo.com
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