In Continuum.

Through my stubborn eyes, I read the morning newspaper at the dining table while trying to stay awake for the most part. Seven hours of sleep for me should be enough for the most part, or at least that is the recommended amount of sleep that I have been hearing from the parents and the army. That is the minimum that I allow myself to sleep for anyway, and anything less than that is never voluntary or habitual. I love to sleep, I love everything about it. I love how it marks the end of a day, when your only job left to do is to put yourself in an immobile state in bed while your brain goes into a fantasy world for a couple of hours. It's like a drug-induced hallucination without the drugs involved, just brain juice flowing around inside your head while you are asleep. It is probably the easiest thing to do for me, though there are periods of time when I'd be unable to fall asleep fast enough. You know, like what most insomniacs would tell you about their sleeping patterns, I have my taste of it every once in a while. It's not common, but it annoys the hell out of me. Depriving me of sleeping is like depriving me of food and water somehow. I do consider them to be rather important things in my life, as I enjoy the activity so much.

Anyway, so I was at the dining table with my eyes slowly adjusting to the light when I saw an article in the newspaper about young Singaporeans choosing to sleep less at night, and that is making the experts very worried. That got me rather interested, because of how many people I know who are in the exact same state. I know of a handful of people who'd come to school with dark rings around the eyes, then doze off in the middle of classes because they haven't got enough sleep last night. We've all had similar experiences though, because there's always that important soccer match in the previous night that you just have to stay up to watch. Or that occasional project that comes along that requires you to stay up way past your normal sleeping time to complete. Shit happens, and everybody knows that. Things don't always occur in accordance to how we plan them, so we alter our plans to deal with these situations in the best way we know how. Sleeping late every once in a while isn't uncommon, but these friends of mine come to school every single day with the same sleeping issues. And it's not because we have assignments at home to work on or because they are soccer fans at all. They are sleeping late because, like the article mentioned, they choose to do so.

Initially, I'd try to talk to my friend out of this. In fact, all of my other friends tried to talk this friend out of this. I mean, I love to sleep late, and I am a night owl - don't get me wrong. I am a nocturnal animal who loves the silence of the night and the tranquility of it all. The difference is that I love waking up late as well, and sleeping late is usually an option I go for when I haven't the need to wake up early tomorrow morning. I give myself seven hours, minimum, to sleep every night. That is what I try to do, and you have moments whereby you do a little additional and subtraction every now and then. It's inevitable, but I understand the beauty of the night just like any other person out there. However, when you have to wake up at seven in the morning, you don't go to sleep at five in the morning thinking that you'd just get so tired the following day that you'd be knocked out after dinner. It doesn't work that way at all, which was why I was really worried for my friend. I know the negative impacts of sleeping late, the repercussions that come along with it as well. It is an unhealthy thing, and there is a reason why humans need to shutdown for a while at night - we need to rest.

Like I said, I didn't get what was going on in my friend's life, and didn't really see why it was so hard for my friend to change. My thought was, if you want to sleep earlier, then sleep earlier. If you take three hours to fall asleep, then go to bed three hours earlier than you usually do. I didn't understand why people would stay up at night just to watch television shows or play games, when everything amounts to negative input by morning. You know, decreasing marginal returns, a term that we've learned in economics that explains this situation very well. The vicious cycle works like that: when you sleep late at night and wake up early in the morning, you feel tired all the time throughout the day. So, when you go home, you take a little nap, telling yourself that you need that nap. By night time, because of that nap, you'd be wide awake all over again, and your body is going to let you go to sleep because you have already slept a good deal in the afternoon. So the vicious cycle goes on and on and on, and it is really very difficult to break out of it. That was the reason why I might have felt somewhat frustrated on my friend's situation. Perhaps, I thought, I could convince the parents to strap the friend down onto the bed at ten o'clock at night or something like that. Then, of course, I continued reading the article and realized that maybe, just maybe, it isn't always his or her fault when he or she chooses not to sleep.

Here is a little quote from that little article of something Dr. Pang said. He says that insufficient rest can lead to poor concentration, decreased productivity at work and increased irritability. OK, so basically if you continuously get insufficient amount of sleep, you'd basically suck at work. That is the basic notion of his statement, and I just feel like this serves a larger agenda, if you ask me. You have to go back to why people are losing sleep in our society in the first place, why people would choose to do whatever they want to do and sacrifice those hours of the night just to do them. When you have a society that bears down on its people with stress from your job, your school, or your family, what do you honestly expect from your people other than reactions such as this? When you emphasize so much on a career, on your earnings, on the results, people are going to do whatever they can to meet those expectations. So we work our heads off for the better part of the day, and most of us forget that we have ourselves to take care of. And it's not just the health aspect that we are talking about, but the importance of spending some time with yourself and doing something that you want. How many people working now has the luxury of doing that anyway. My friend's sister comes home at midnight everyday - where is the time for herself?

When a doctor tries to convince you not to sleep late by saying that it affects your productivity at work, your concentration level at work, you know that he does not want you to sleep so little because he, like the society as a whole, wants you to work. Yes, it's like this invisible whip packaged to look like a professional health advice from a doctor. It's like saying, the only reason why you should have enough sleep is because if you don't, you will not be able to work and toil for us, and the society will not be able to function, and everything falls apart! For the greater good, for our common cause, sleep early! That is like some kind of world war two propaganda or something, but I think that is the kind of subtle propaganda they are trying to drill into our heads. They don't seem to really mind that they are robbing you of your time with yourself and your loved ones. They don't seem to really care if you are coming home at midnight and going to work at seven in the morning with little time for sleep, not to mention some time for yourself. All they seem to care about is whether or not you are getting your work done, your report handed up, your assignment handed in. Everything is about productivity now, and we are like gears in this giant machine that are not allowed to rest for one second.

I think the only reason why people are choosing not to sleep is because they feel like they really need that little time for themselves, you know. Like, when you have already taken up two-thirds of my day, I feel like I want to have the power and control over how I want to spend the other one-third of the time, even if it means less sleep and more me-time. They are choosing to sleep late because the society as a whole has robbed them of the better half of their lives. You and I both know that by the time the society allows you to retire, you are going to look back and realize that the better half of your life would have been spent on working for somebody else and not yourself. I am not saying that work is not important at all, in fact I think it is very crucial in terms of the economy as well as your own need for material gratification. You need to work to get the money, and you need to get the money to spend it on things that make you comfortable, that make you happy. You shouldn't be living to work, but you should be working to live. You should be working because you want to do something with the money that you earn, and not living because you feel like all you are good at is to work for, well, something. You'd have to figure that out yourself, even if you are retired and too late to right the wrongs.

I just feel that while the author of the article is asking questions and offering reasons as to why people should be tucking themselves in earlier at night, he didn't really talk about why people are doing what they are doing. I don't think anybody really wants to go to work all tired and worn out. Nobody wants to feel lethargic, and everybody wants to have energy to do what they like and what they want. Still, you have to realize that in our society today, it does not give a lot or room to yourself. It's like, your company wants your time from nine to five, if they are kind, and then the additional one hour before and after work for traveling belongs to them too. But you and I both know that most companies these days don't allow you to get off work at five. They want you to work overtime without pay, even if they don't explicitly tell you that. Deep inside, you know that when it comes to retrenchment, the people who haven't got a lot of unpaid overtimes will be going first. Haven't worked extra hours without pay? Out. Haven't spent more time than you should in the office? Out. You knocked off work at five while everybody else stayed until ten at night? Out. That is the reality of things, and you can tell by the number of lighted offices in Shenton Way at ten o'clock at night. People don't sleep anymore, because they've got WORK to do.

How do you expect people to rest like that, especially when so many people out there have to deal with their work even on weekends. My friend's mother has to work six days a week, coming home and barely having the time for the family. This is one mother with one job, and imagine how it'd be like for the mothers and the fathers taking up two, or three jobs. Taxi drivers work at fifteen or sixteen hours a day for three hundred and sixty five days a year - no breaks. If you take a break, you don't get money in your pocket. If you are sick, you don't get money in your pocket. No subsidies, no compensations, no vacations. That is how everything works, and they want every ounce of that twenty-four hours, because all the bigger corporations and all the people that control these big corporations want more than your time and your sweat and your blood. They want more, and that is why you have to give up the time that is rightfully yours, to spend with your loved ones - like yourself. You get home from work, and you realize that for a fact. You tell yourself that you shouldn't let others tell you how you want to live your life, and you want some control over things. So you give up that one thing that you can give up on - sleep. You spend a bit of time on the computer, with a book, or some pointless game.

I get into that sometimes, not being able to properly sleep at night. It can be frustrating because you know you need it, and yet you can't get it. I think the only reason why these people are choosing to do what they are doing is because they feel like they have had enough time taken away from them. It doesn't even have to be work though, but it begins all the way back in school. You know, parents forcing their children to go for classes after school. Oh, before they go for those classes and those tuitions, they go for CCAs. Great, now everything is devoted to the school, and the best cartoons are already over by the time you are free. Then your parents usher you to go to bed and get ready for school tomorrow, but you have your homework and you have to complete them before class tomorrow. That is the reality that a lot of people are facing, and no wonder they are giving up sleeping time to do whatever that they want to do. You have twenty-four hours in a day, and pick a lifestyle or a work that fits you in the most comfortable way. If it is sucking your life out, quit it. I know times are tough, and having a steady income is more important than anything. But without health, you can't do anything in life at all.