"To Sleep, Perchance To Dream"

Next to the most often quoted of all of William Shakespeare's words, "To be or not to be", is "To sleep, perchance to dream", both from Hamlet's famous soliloquy, Act 3 Scene 1.

I am no Shakespearean scholar nor do I  desire to be one but there is something about the above quotation that makes me wonder.  Did old William just touch on the two subject matters that frequently occupied the minds of the people during his time - sleep and death? But is it not also even more remarkably so today? More on this in a bit.

Did you know that people can fast for a week and would be fine afterwards but sleep deprivation even for just 2-3 days is considered torture in international law. Gandhi fasted in at least three separate episodes of his life from 1932 to 1943 and the longest on record was 18 days which showed little or no  ill effects on his physical and mental health. On the other hand,

.."staying awake for 24 hours causes similar cognitive effects as a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10%, which is higher than the legal limit for driving."        according to the CDC

 

“Sleep deprivation is a high interest loan with steep payments in the form of health consequences.”      -------- Dr. Abhinav Singh, Sleep Physician

The occasional all-nighter to finish a project, a report, or complete doing something on a deadline may have no ill effects if done only once in a while but "borrowing" hours from each daily pattern of sleep could result in chronic sleep deprivation with serious health consequences.

Then there is a world-wide demand for sleep aid and medications for sleep related issues  that in 2025 reached $84 billion and is expected to rise to $163 billion in 2034, barely half a generation from now.

Apparently, advanced mental capacity notwithstanding, only humans suffer from sleep disorder or, is it because of it that makes us vulnerable? Dolphins and whales deal with it by having half their brains go to sleep while the other half is wide awake in alternating fashion while resting. Mammals that they are, the need to breathe air is dealt with through this awesome biological adaptation in a watery environment. I guess whales and dolphins do not suffer from insomnia.

Let's get back to old William S.

There are many interpretations of Hamlet's soliloquy but even today do we not see the message to the ambitious executive, the startup business entrepreneur, or the rich worrying about losing their accumulated wealth?

    

                     "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

                      The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,"..

Or, to the worrier, the heartbroken, or anyone filled with hopelessness in the face of misfortune:

"Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.."

 

".. The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep".

Was this grappling with existential questions about life and death? Or, was it contemplating the fear of the unknown after death?  And there too are feelings of despair that some of us may suffer.  But, was it not about sleep too?

If we go by the recommended eight hours of sleep per day, it means spending a third of our lives unaware of what is going on around us. Speaking of being unaware, that is what  general anesthesia does to us during surgery or routine colonoscopy (for those of us of a certain age who have undergone this procedure). But did you know that under anesthesia we do not dream? So, not only are we not aware of what is going on under anesthesia, we do not feel pain, we do not remember anything and we do not dream.  Not only are our reflexes and involuntary movements suppressed while under anesthesia, mechanical ventilation is needed to help us breathe.  The anesthesiologist, whose presence during these procedures is a must, ensures that heart and blood pressure and other vital signs are monitored and that the patient is able to breathe. In other words we are totally in a state of unconsciousness; but are our brains deactivated during all that time? 

But what does that mean?  Is our subconscious also offline?  Is that about as close as we can experience - need we say it - death? To sleep but perchance to not dream! 

But death we need not talk about; instead, let's examine sleep.

 

In normal sleep we dream. However, why are our dreams not quite so normal? I mean our dreams are often weird, silly at times, but dream we do anyhow.

"No one has a single, definitive answer for why humans dream, but neuroscience has moved well beyond guessing. The brain is intensely active during sleep, cycling through stages that each produce different kinds of mental experiences. The leading explanations point to several overlapping functions: consolidating memories, processing emotions, rehearsing threats, and fostering creative thinking. Rather than competing, these theories likely each capture a piece of what dreaming does for us".

So the brain does really want to remain active while much of our physical body is at rest?  But why the silly scenarios, such as, being on a business trip in some unknown city and not able to find your way back to the hotel; or, getting ready for a business presentation and you have no clue about what to present; or, finding yourself with business colleagues ready to board the plane and you are the only one without a boarding pass; or, how about witnessing an airplane crash and when you get to where it fell, you only find a burning chicken, etc. Except for one, those are some of my dreams, long after I've  retired, mind you.

What about nightmares? Is the brain merely trying to scare us?  Or, left alone without our conscious supervision, is the brain just being naughty or capricious while we are sleeping, to get something out of our system and relieve us of daytime stress?

Or, does the brain do it to free us of wild ideas about talking spiders where some have the ability to detect gravity waves, lions and hyenas debating theology, and marauding witches, or conversations between an angel and the devil, etc.  Wait, I wrote those, and if the reader cares(d) to read about them from some of my earlier blogs, you'll know what I mean. So, it's not that. I do hope it's not that.  We'll leave that to the neuroscientists and psychiatrists.

According to one U.N. estimate, 16% of the world's population suffer from insomnia, more among women than men, while those 65 years old or older suffer the least. Shall we guess that women are typically the worrier and those past 65 don't worry too much because they've "been there, done that"?

Granted insomnia is not a permanent malady for most, we are still talking about a billion people having problems with sleep at one time or another; put another way, one in seven people is affected.  No wonder sleeping medications and other sleep aids are a booming business.

Aside from sleep aids and medications, we get a host of advice, "proven" techniques and tricks to getting a good night sleep from friends, from doctors, from  media influencers, etc. 

The reader will get one from me as well. Part of a questionnaire our primary care doctor used to ask me during my annual physical is about how well I sleep at night. I told him what my wife usually says about my sleep pattern - that I fall asleep at the flip of the light switch. At each physical since, he'd remember about it and he kept telling me that it is a blessing to be able to do that. He did ask me once how I do it. I told him that I don't think much about how I do it other than actually using a mental switch the moment I close my eyes.  

Of course, falling asleep at the flip of a switch is an exaggeration but it is pretty close. Then I told him that there  is one interesting question; "What do I do when on rare occasions when sleep eludes me after several minutes when the switch has been flipped and I'm still awake.

I would imagine myself lying along a narrow and gently flowing stream, water slowly cascading over rocks and stones and there's a small fire nearby.  The doctor asked if I'm inside a sleeping bag or on an air mattress. That is never part of the scenery, besides, I've had no experience in real life doing it, not once ever, so the discomfort of the stony ground or wet grass are not in the realm of my imagination. I do imagine  being under a blanket but not worrying about mosquitoes and other night flying insects, snakes slithering by or some nocturnal rodents passing through.  No mosquito nets either. It's the stream, the fire and the blanket that do the trick, a mere stage scene with no basis in reality, yet it works. A variation is sleeping inside a teepee, fire nearby, or on a desert sand or beach under a palm or coconut tree.

But there is the question of falling back to sleep after waking up for one reason or another. A trip (or two) to the bathroom is a common reason - guys of a certain age know what I mean.  Well, I read somewhere a while back, or was it a YouTube presentation, that there is a trick that works all the time when falling back to sleep is an issue.

Here's how it works.

1. Think of a word, with perhaps 4-6 letters.

2. Starting with the first letter, think of as many words as you can that start with that letter, then do the same with the next letter, with the aim of doing all the letters.

Example, you thought of the word - "cover" - starting with 'c', you think of:

cup, cobra, capsule, Cuba, etc., then followed by 'o': ocean, oven, optical, ox, overnight, etc. and on to the remaining letters v, e, r.

The more unrelated the words are to each other, the more effective it is because, we are told, the brain is set up that way during sleep. It goes through all kinds of unrelated scenarios - a disorganized calisthenics of thoughts (my description) - and that's what makes our dreams weird and unreal; a warm up for the brain to take over the landscape of a dreamful sleep.

But it works. You are likely not able to complete the entire exercise before falling back to sleep.  

All that being said, I caution the reader that I am not a sleep psychologist (if there is such a thing as sleep psychology) and I am just relating what I read or saw.  Worth a try though.  It just might surprise you.  

Failing that, get up, get out of the bedroom and read the entire Hamlet soliloquy, and see if it will not put you to sleep. Or, at least you'll see proof of the evolution of language  and why some words succumbed to inevitable extinction. 

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Well, it's time to say, "Tonight I bid you to sleep, let your brain clean up the clutter and toss them out, and keep only those worth remembering the next morning.