If our lives were music, they would be syncopated songs.
Find yourself having trouble putting on a happy face during the long winter of political and social discontent? Worried about a world that is beset by threats from warmongers, terrorists, all sorts of “bad guys,” rioting mobs, anarchists, and opportunistic insects like murder hornets? Worried about a worrisome disease? An oncoming storm? And what about all those family concerns? Chill a bit. That’s it, breathe deeply (not too deeply; we don’t need you to hyperventilate). Take a short nap.
Oh! I forgot. You’ve been having some trouble sleeping, what with those troubling dreams and such: Like going into a crowded store where no one is wearing a medical mask and everyone is sneezing or walking into a crowded store where everyone is wearing a mask while robbing the cash register. Yes, staccato-like sleep followed by a groggy wake up and a morning through which you just drag along, plagues you with a feeling akin to trying to rise when the cold temperatures and extended darkness of winter envelop you.
It appears that we aren’t the only species to experience problems with sleep. According to neurobiologists at Northwestern University, Drosophilia also experiences a sluggish wake up when the temperature falls below a “comfort zone.”* The fruit fly has sensors in its antennae identified as thermometer neurons that serve as the fly’s morning cup of joe; those neurons get the fly, as they said in WWI, up-an’-at-‘em. Well, cold and dark conditions shut down those neurons. Now, consider the possibility that similar neurons exist somewhere in your brain. In the long dark winter of discontent, you just don’t have the gittyupandgo you have in brighter warmer times. Of course, your brain deals with more than light and temperature.
Who wants to wake up to a world of threats and interruptions? To a world that seems in just a couple of months to have come crashing down by a blitzkrieg of disease and other problems? Couldn’t we just go back to sleep to wait for warmer sunnier days?
What if humans have always lived in perpetual winters of discontent and sunny happy days have been either quite brief or illusory? After all, isn’t there always a conflict going on somewhere? Isn’t the threat of disease the framework of everyone’s environment? It wasn’t so long ago that you were concerned about H1N1, and now there’s news that a new form of it dwells in some Asian pigs, though it hasn’t jumped to humans yet. Wow! I’m painting a dark picture here, a picture of a cold reality: A future beset by interruptions to your life’s rhythm.
But it’s not always a “cold, dark and stormy winter night,” and “noir,” even if persistent, doesn’t occur continuously. Clouds break up sometime. The sun shines. Warmth bathes the land, even if only temporarily.
Apparently, we aren’t too different from other organisms, even simple ones like the fruit fly. Any organism can have its circadian rhythms interrupted. It just so happens that for the simpler organisms the interruptions are simpler, things like the amount of light and temperature. For you the interruptions are more complex, and even your interruptions have interruptions.
Such is the long winter of humanity’s discontent. Such is the cause of imperfect and syncopated rest. It’s more than the nature of things to interrupt the flow of life, to break up the regular pattern of restful summer days and restless winter nights. Regular patterns of peaceful serenity appear to be the exception, not the rule. Life is syncopated music. We’re complex. So, don’t expect life not to be complex. Very few people get to go through a “smooth and uninterrupted” day. What is the rhythm of such a day? Is it a vacation day, a lazy lying on the beach while being served by a butler? Is that what you want? Wait! Did I hear you say, “Yes”?
Or do you actually, when you think about it, like syncopation, some interruption to rhythm that enlivens the day not necessarily by what you perceive as threats, but at least by something different, something a little out of the regular beat, by something unexpected. Maybe in being interrupted, you find your restless self to be more creative as you encounter unanticipated challenges.
*https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-clue-hard-cold-winter-morning.html
Find yourself having trouble putting on a happy face during the long winter of political and social discontent? Worried about a world that is beset by threats from warmongers, terrorists, all sorts of “bad guys,” rioting mobs, anarchists, and opportunistic insects like murder hornets? Worried about a worrisome disease? An oncoming storm? And what about all those family concerns? Chill a bit. That’s it, breathe deeply (not too deeply; we don’t need you to hyperventilate). Take a short nap.
Oh! I forgot. You’ve been having some trouble sleeping, what with those troubling dreams and such: Like going into a crowded store where no one is wearing a medical mask and everyone is sneezing or walking into a crowded store where everyone is wearing a mask while robbing the cash register. Yes, staccato-like sleep followed by a groggy wake up and a morning through which you just drag along, plagues you with a feeling akin to trying to rise when the cold temperatures and extended darkness of winter envelop you.
It appears that we aren’t the only species to experience problems with sleep. According to neurobiologists at Northwestern University, Drosophilia also experiences a sluggish wake up when the temperature falls below a “comfort zone.”* The fruit fly has sensors in its antennae identified as thermometer neurons that serve as the fly’s morning cup of joe; those neurons get the fly, as they said in WWI, up-an’-at-‘em. Well, cold and dark conditions shut down those neurons. Now, consider the possibility that similar neurons exist somewhere in your brain. In the long dark winter of discontent, you just don’t have the gittyupandgo you have in brighter warmer times. Of course, your brain deals with more than light and temperature.
Who wants to wake up to a world of threats and interruptions? To a world that seems in just a couple of months to have come crashing down by a blitzkrieg of disease and other problems? Couldn’t we just go back to sleep to wait for warmer sunnier days?
What if humans have always lived in perpetual winters of discontent and sunny happy days have been either quite brief or illusory? After all, isn’t there always a conflict going on somewhere? Isn’t the threat of disease the framework of everyone’s environment? It wasn’t so long ago that you were concerned about H1N1, and now there’s news that a new form of it dwells in some Asian pigs, though it hasn’t jumped to humans yet. Wow! I’m painting a dark picture here, a picture of a cold reality: A future beset by interruptions to your life’s rhythm.
But it’s not always a “cold, dark and stormy winter night,” and “noir,” even if persistent, doesn’t occur continuously. Clouds break up sometime. The sun shines. Warmth bathes the land, even if only temporarily.
Apparently, we aren’t too different from other organisms, even simple ones like the fruit fly. Any organism can have its circadian rhythms interrupted. It just so happens that for the simpler organisms the interruptions are simpler, things like the amount of light and temperature. For you the interruptions are more complex, and even your interruptions have interruptions.
Such is the long winter of humanity’s discontent. Such is the cause of imperfect and syncopated rest. It’s more than the nature of things to interrupt the flow of life, to break up the regular pattern of restful summer days and restless winter nights. Regular patterns of peaceful serenity appear to be the exception, not the rule. Life is syncopated music. We’re complex. So, don’t expect life not to be complex. Very few people get to go through a “smooth and uninterrupted” day. What is the rhythm of such a day? Is it a vacation day, a lazy lying on the beach while being served by a butler? Is that what you want? Wait! Did I hear you say, “Yes”?
Or do you actually, when you think about it, like syncopation, some interruption to rhythm that enlivens the day not necessarily by what you perceive as threats, but at least by something different, something a little out of the regular beat, by something unexpected. Maybe in being interrupted, you find your restless self to be more creative as you encounter unanticipated challenges.
*https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-clue-hard-cold-winter-morning.html
RSS Feed