Sleep and peace

A human being is only peaceful when he is asleep. And when he wakes up, he wakes up to a nightmare. His reality is a nightmare.

We’ve all slept. You know, that deep sleep that engulfs you when you are in church during the sermon. That state of unconsciousness you get into when in a bus from town to githurai, that makes you drip saliva while leaning on the shoulder of a pissed-off female prophet Owuor follower.  Or the coma that men slip into immediately after having sex with their wives.

When you wake up from that sleep, you wonder what just happened to you. You wonder where you have been. It feels like you slept for eternity but you look at the watch and notice that you have only slept for ten minutes.

I suspect that deep sleep is what death feels like. Only that we never get to wake up.

But let’s examine it for a moment. What actually happens when we are in a deep sleep? I will not inundate you with the neuroscience of sleep; the sleep cycle, REM and stuff. I’m interested in you. Where do you go when you are asleep?

When we are asleep, we disappear. In that moment, we don’t exist. The self, does not exist. We are not aware of ourselves. The I, that we call ourselves; the father, mother, Christian, husband, wife, employee, boss, and such, all goes into oblivion.

And that’s why there’s freedom. That’s why there is peace. That’s why there is serenity.

But the moment we wake up, the self, the I, the person that we believe ourselves to be, comes back to life.

And with it, all our problems.

Life is life

Fabio