Sleep Is So Weird
Sleep is so weird.
I want to talk about sleep today. Just how weird and cool it is that we do this.
Every single night you lie down, close your eyes, and go unconscious. On purpose. For like eight hours. You’re just gone. And you don’t even think about it. You just trust that you’re gonna come back.
I was thinking about it more. If anything else made you black out for a third of the day, every day, you’d be at the doctor. But this is just, you know, the deal. Everybody does it. Nobody questions it.
A third of your life. If I live to 80 that’s like 26 years of being out. 26 years. I’ve got so much stuff I want to do and a third of the time I’m not even there.
And nobody really knows why we do it.
I’m not a scientist, don’t quote me, but from what I can tell the honest answer to “why do we sleep” is still basically “not sure.” There’s a bunch of theories. Cleaning out your brain, filing your memories away, whatever. There was a study where they found the brain kind of flushes itself out while you sleep, and then another one came out and said, actually, no, it flushes less, and now the scientists are fighting about it. That’s where we’re at. Every animal on the planet does this thing and we’re still arguing about what it’s for.
Jellyfish sleep. That one got me. Jellyfish don’t even have a brain and they still sleep. Some scientists at Caltech watched these upside-down jellyfish and at night they slow down, they get slower to react, and if you keep them up all night they’re sluggish the next day. A groggy jellyfish. A thing with no brain needs to sleep. So whatever sleep is, it’s older than brains, I guess.
Last time I wondered if the dinosaurs liked the rain. Did the dinosaurs sleep? They had to, right? A T. rex just lying down somewhere, out cold, for hours, and anything could walk up to it. Something that big and that mean still had to give up and shut off every day. So I guess it’s worth it. Whatever it does.
And the ways animals do it are crazy. Dolphins sleep with half their brain at a time. One eye open. So they can keep swimming and come up to breathe. There’s a bird that sleeps while it’s flying. Like, over the ocean, flying, asleep. Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t float away from each other. That one might be my favorite, I don’t know.
And then there’s the stuff that happens to you while you’re in there.
When you’re dreaming your body gets paralyzed. Actually paralyzed. Your brain shuts your muscles off so you don’t get up and act the dream out. And sometimes people wake up before it turns back on and they’re just lying there, awake, can’t move. That’s sleep paralysis. No thanks.
Your brain waves literally change shape too. Awake they’re all fast and messy. Deep sleep they’re these big slow rolling waves. And then you start dreaming and it lights back up and looks almost like you’re awake again. Except you’re not. You’re lying there paralyzed watching a movie your own head is making up.
And then you forget the movie. Every night. You probably dream for a couple hours and remember basically none of it. Your brain makes whole worlds, with people in them, and conversations, and then just throws it all away. Where does that go?
And that thing where you’re falling asleep and your whole body jolts like you missed a step. Everybody gets that. Nobody’s sure why.
Okay, this one is actually my favorite. Some scientists figured out how to talk to people while they’re dreaming. They took people who can realize they’re dreaming mid-dream, asked them math questions out loud while they were asleep, and the dreamers answered from inside the dream by moving their eyes. Somebody was asleep, in a dream, doing eight minus six, and got it right.
Does the tree sleep? I’ve been thinking about that tree again. And kind of, yeah, apparently. Some researchers pointed lasers at birch trees all night and the branches droop, like four inches, and then in the morning they perk back up. So the tree’s out there drooping at 4 AM too. I don’t know, I love that.
But the part I keep coming back to is the deep sleep part. The part with no dreams. You close your eyes and then it’s morning. Eight hours, gone. You didn’t experience any of it. There was no you in there. And then you come back and you’re still you. Same memories, same worries, same everything, like nothing happened.
Every night we basically stop existing for a while and just, I don’t know, trust it. And so far it works.
I’m not a religious dude, but that feels like a big deal. It’s kind of a little preview of not being here, I guess. And we do it every single night and then get up and make coffee.
Sleep is so weird. I love it.
Anyway. I’m gonna go do it.
How this was written
This post was drafted from my notes by an AI model and then edited by me. The reasoning, decisions, and corrections are mine; the prose started from a machine. The underlying technical work this post describes is real.
Licensed CC-BY-4.0.