The Philosophy of Sleep

It is one of the most natural things to do, but for a hard-working student or an employee it can be a luxury one can’t afford.To me sleep isn't just a thing you do at night. Its an important aspect of my lifestyle. I live by it. Its a healthy drug that makes me forget about my worries and makes me feel better and able to take on that problem when I wake up. Like that graffiti scrawled on the chair that I see every single day I have come to study it, and after a profound secession of soul-searching have actually come up with several classifications of sleep that I experience.

The first is Sleep Sleep which is the simplest kind. I fall asleep, I wake up. No dreams, no thoughts, just a deep slumber to wash away my fatigue and recharge me for the next day. Uneventful, but in the deeper levels its so effective that when I wake up I realize I forgot everything about yesterday and today until it comes back to you 5 minutes later. Once I woke up feeling so good without a care in the world when suddenly I remembered I had my math midterms later.
The second is the Fantastic Sleep, my most preferred kind. It is the kind of sleep in which my mind jumps off into amazing and even ludicrous scenarios ranging from my most romantic fantasies to my most horrible nightmares. It can be one long story or a series of different episodes, but the most amazing about it is that even if my mind is busy living its fantasy nightlife I still get a goodnights’ sleep. A deeper, more rested sleep in fact than the ordinary kind. I get to go off on a Narnianic adventure when I'm snoozing off, and when I wake up I feel as if I had slept for two nights instead of one. Fantastic, aint it?
Next is the Tossing-Turning Sleep, the sleep of a troubled man. I have a 5 page essay due for Friday, an upcoming report, and two long-quizzes to study for. I lay on my bed running over math formulas while already drafting my essay in my mind. I keep thinking about your schoolwork so much that it seems I do not fall asleep at all, until I realize that I have been falling asleep after all, it’s just my mind is still on overdrive that all you I think about is work. You wake up feeling as you didn’t wake up at all, just getting up from your bed. It’s hard to get out of it when it has become a pattern, but the sooner, the better. If you happen to find yourself in this situation, the best technique to remove it is stop thinking. Stop thinking of your works, your assignments, everything. Hard to do, I know, but for starters think about your breathing, or the darkness. Think about falling asleep, then stop thinking at all. Mastery of this technique is vital to regain a normal sleep pattern. I don't know if it will work for you, but it works for me.
The last kind is the Julius sleep, in which a mind-numbing lecture, a boring road trip or just being bored can cause my brain to just shut down. In my opinion it’s a step away from being brain dead as I feel everything just slipping away - eyelids drooping, handwriting turns into squiggles, losing muscle control and drool starts to drip. To me it has turned into a technique, an artform where you can "turn your brain off". Named after my blockmate(which so expertly exhibits this technique), this serves the simple function of killing time from a very long trip or a boring time of the day. It feels like a kind of unholy sleepiness gripping my body that no amount of caffeine can seem to remove. I think it’s my bodies natural defensive mechanism to protect it from harm, say like from math class.
Sleep is important, holding a pinnacle postion to my lifestyle philosophy, as important as eating and so as an absolute rule not to be sacrificied for studying and other less important activities. To me it has evolved into an philosophy, a discipline, with its own set of rules and techniques. To get 8 hours is the best, 7 hours forgivable, 6 hours and less is pushing it. Why lose sleep by studying when the next day your brain won't be working well enough to remember what you studied? why lose sleep trying to finish a paper when you cannot even chain the most rudimentary of words to form a sentence?
Getting enough sleep is the easiest thing you could do to keep healthy. Why not do it? Make it your lifestyle rule too.