This is a midsummer short and light hearted post, but I find that Summer is often the time when I am most reminded of my bodily existence, and of how naïve us philosophers are in forgetting (de facto, if not in principle) how much our thoughts and beliefs are embedded in our bodily experience. Indeed,often caused by our bodies.
This is often a knee jerk reaction. I was once chatting with a friend about meditation, and mindfulness in particular, and I shared with her how I struggle with the former in general, an the latter in particular. She said she found mindfulness helpful because of how it encourages us to see our thoughts from a distance, as something that we can, to some extent, distance ourselves from. My immediate, instinctive response was, “but who is that “we” that is separate from our thoughts? Who are we if we are not our thoughts?”. She burst out laughing at my cliché philosopher reaction and responded, amused, “we are our bodies, of course!”.
Yes, we are our body, and our body very often determines which thoughts we have. I can’t stop thinking about food when I am hungry, and I often can’t stop having negative thoughts when I am tired. But the opposite is true, too – our bodies sometimes just force us to relinquish negative thoughts when they just feel well. One obvious example, for me, is when I receive a massage. I indulge in this a couple of times a year and really look forward to it. But when the appointment time comes, I often start worrying I might not be in the right state of mind, and I won’t be able to relax, regardless of how good the massage is. Without exception, the opposite happens: my mind just stops racing and spiralling, almost against its own will. My body just starts feeling too well, and forces my mind to just shut up and go to sleep.
Which brings me to the title of this post. One thing that often happens in these cases is that I drift into a sort of light sleep, which is not a fully unconscious state of mind as it doesn’t prevent me from feeling what is being done to my body, enjoying it, and remembering it afterwards. Similarly, something else that I can only do on vacation is drifting off in the middle of the day – e.g. on the beach with a gentle breeze and the sound of the waves in the background, or when I am driving shotgun during a road trip. There is nothing “boring” about these experiences. I relish them. I fall asleep because I feel comfortable, and I enjoy the process immensely. I always joke about the fact that my best naps (indeed almost all my naps) happen when I am driven around by C. , and C jokes about how much he loves driving around listening to his beloved classical music whilst the rest of the family sleeps.
And of course, on top of this, sleep is one of the best ways for our bodies to recover when ill or injured.
So, let’s do away with the sleep=boring analogy. We fall asleep when we feel well – there is nothing boring about it.
{ 17 comments }
Matt 08.20.24 at 10:50 am
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a21997
(I wonder who says that sleep = boring, though. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that, except little kids to who don’t want to go to bed, or maybe as a misunderstanding of what’s said to people who want to lay in bed [not necessarily sleep] all day. Is it a common thought? )
engels 08.20.24 at 11:24 am
Imo we should all be paid for the time we spend sleeping (like commuting) as it’s an essential prerequisite of productive labour.
Chris Armstrong 08.20.24 at 12:53 pm
I’ve always loved sleeping – I only wish I were better at it.
I’m with you completely on the holiday sleepiness thing – a nice lunch, a glass of wine, no work commitments, somewhere to ‘read’ but actually nod off – that’s heaven.
Harry 08.20.24 at 12:59 pm
I wonder if the quality of one’s body affects whether one is a dualist. I have never thought I was my body; have always felt alienated from it, because I’ve never felt at ease in it, and it complies so imperfectly with my will (even when I’m well). To me physicalism has always seemed like something you’d only believe if a theory told you to; but maybe if I were more at ease in my body I’d have a different intuition.
Including sleep. For most of my adult life I’ve had trouble sleeping (not helped by having 3 kids with a 10 year span; also probably not helped by the fact that I’ve had nightmares pretty much every night since I can remember). About 15 years ago I started sleeping pills and about 6 years ago they started working, which is a huge benefit, but is an instance of me controlling my body only with artificial help.
David in Tokyo 08.20.24 at 1:55 pm
“We fall asleep when we feel well – there is nothing boring about it.”
Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe you’re right. My reading has become horrifically inefficient of late. I read a few pages (or maybe even just a paragraph), close the book to think about what was being said. And.Doze.Off.
Or stop reading to listen to the music that’s playing, and really listen; savoring each insane burst of 16th notes at the insane tempos Stitt loved, the walking bass line, each return to the theme by the whole band after a spacier than usual improv section (the Dead were great at this, bebop’s much more subtle about changing sections in the form).
But I’ve always done/needed sleeping pills. I get a second wind around midnight, think of the things I haven’t played recently, still haven’t read, wanted to get done that day and didn’t, and could do any one or more of those things, quite well for the next efw hours without problem. And be non-functional the next morning. (I hung out with the MIT AI Lab hackers (the system programmers (“hacker” had no negative connotations in those days)) as an undergrad, and they’d keep going till they dropped, and then sleep until they woke, running on 28 or 29 hour days. And have no interactions with the rest of the human race. I respected those blokes no end, but don’t want to go there, thank you…
SusanC 08.20.24 at 2:00 pm
On the other hand, Buddhists often say “You are not your body”.
Aardvark Cheeselog 08.20.24 at 4:16 pm
That’s the joke. This is literally case 23 of the Mumonkon.
If the true self is that which one can control, the body cannot be the true self: one cannot command the body “Be tall and slender instead of being short and fat!”
The sense of creating space between one’s self and the experience that one is reacting to is a recurring theme in talk about mindfulness practice and why one would do such a thing.
engels 08.20.24 at 5:14 pm
I wonder who says that sleep = boring, though
I think the conventional wisdom is that boring things make you sleep. If sleep itself was boring that might lead to an infinite loop and you would never wake up.
Miriam Ronzoni 08.20.24 at 9:42 pm
@Matt: what engels said.
Miriam Ronzoni 08.20.24 at 9:45 pm
@Harry: completely understand, and can relate, but one could also see things the other way around: because we are dualist, we can only identify with our bodily existence when our body complies, i.e when it does what we want it to do.
Miriam Ronzoni 08.20.24 at 9:47 pm
@Chris yes!
Matt 08.20.24 at 10:45 pm
Thanks, engels and Miriam – that makes sense. It does seem that boring things often do cause, or contribute to, sleepiness, though, right? I don’t see how anything here goes against that, which is why it was a bit odd to me.
Alan White 08.20.24 at 11:55 pm
Miriam (if I may) I do identify with much of your post. Contra Harry, I feel very completed embodied, all too aware of even the slightest bodily changes that infect my thoughts due to aging. But I also can say that my wellness and sleep improved much after retirement from 37 years of being a philosophy professor. While I loved it–especially teaching–not until retirement did I find just how stressful it was on me. The mind-body connection too often works precisely in that direction: what is occupying my mind day-to-day mapped out how my body was reacting. I’m fortunate though to have a very comfortable retirement–many my age can’t escape constant financial worry even in retirement. So my good (enough) sleep is probably most reflective of a peaceful mind. Boring? Not with my dreams!
Suzanne 08.21.24 at 1:52 am
Sleep is death without the responsibility. – Fran Lebowitz
When I wake up early in the morning
Lift my head, I’m still yawning
When I’m in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream (float up stream)
Please, don’t wake me
No, don’t shake me
Leave me where I am
I’m only sleeping
Everybody seems to think I’m lazy
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Runnin’ everywhere at such a speed
‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need)
Please, don’t spoil my day
I’m miles away
And after all
I’m only sleeping
Keepin’ an eye on the world going by my window
Takin’ my time
Lyin’ there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling
Please, don’t spoil my day
I’m miles away
And after all
I’m only sleeping
Keepin’ an eye on the world going by my window
Takin’ my time
When I wake up early in the morning
Lift my head, I’m still yawning
When I’m in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream (float up stream)
Please, don’t wake me
No, don’t shake me
Leave me where I am
I’m only sleeping
— John Lennon
Love the drifting drowsy slow to rise feeling on days when I can awaken naturally.
MisterMr 08.21.24 at 5:56 am
@Aardvark Cheeselog 7
”If the true self is that which one can control”
If you can control your true self, who is the you who is controlling it, separated by your true self?
By definition your true self must be the one doing the controlling, not the one being controlled.
John Q 08.22.24 at 2:15 am
I find myself imagining I am awake until I try to pick up my train of thought and realise that it has been a dreamlike fugue for some time. As with awakening I can sometimes catch the last few threads before it all fades into nothing
JPL 08.25.24 at 10:11 pm
I’ve just been reading, in the NYRB (Feb. 8, 2024), a discussion of Chantal Ackerman’s 2000 film “The captive”, an adaptation of “La captive”, vol. 5 of Proust’s “A la recherche du temps perdu”, and it includes, on p.22, an account of the role of sleep in the relationship of the two main characters that might interest you. Definitely sleep is not boring for this couple, especially the female character. The male character (presumably a stand-in for Proust) likes to write in bed, and the author of the article, Christine Smallwood, goes on to give an interesting account of writing, Proust’s or anybody’s: “No writer can account for their days. When writing has occurred one can never say exactly how it happened; it seems to require some amount of disappearing from the experience itself; writing gets done in the absence of the writer.” It’s well-known that unwilled and unarticulated thought is going on when we sleep, and also when a writer is “in the flow”, as Belle has reminded us here recently. You would also probably, as I would, want to look at the film. (The title of the article is, “Time unregained”, and is part of an upcoming book about the film.)
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