This is a hyperactive country. We must have successful careers, raise superior children, have scintillating hobbies, challenging friends, and be conversant in several languages. If we don't compose haiku while jogging during our lunch hours, we are left in the dust at rap sessions. If we don't bake sourdough bread from scratch while plotting out best-selling novellas, forget any kind of leadership role at church.
We are expected - and expect ourselves - to handle the unexpected with aplomb, from whopper sales meetings to tennis elbow. Then we wonder why we are moody and hunger for chocolate doughnuts and a day off. We are simply trying to do too much.
If we'd added only tooth flossing to our daily routine, it would have been plenty, but we've added careers, campaigns, and causes. Plus, we've become our own doctors, and we write our own divorces. We not only floss our teeth, we inspect them with mirrors and reglue loose caps. We compete with Jane Fonda for the flattest stomach in the world.
We eat lunch while reading the newspaper, listening to the news, and talking on the phone. We wouldn't stop at all if fatigue did not take over after the late-night news. We are proud of how much we can squeeze into every day. But the word is: "Cut back, if you know what's good for you."
Yet what can we eliminate without jeopardizing social circles and salaries? The answer is not on cutting out but on inserting - putting in a nap - like a daylight-saving-time hour is the middle of an afternoon. It's a putting-in that amounts to a taking-time-out. Napping is good for the bones and the tissues, good for the going-crazies.
N-A-P: a temporary respite, a siesta. Expect to get terrified at the notion. We work so hard at working that a suggestion of napping is likely to disturb the blood sugar. Not to worry. Repeat this message to yourself: Everything will still be here when I get back. Close your eyes. Gone. Napping is so easy you'll wonder why you ever took up speed cycling.
Think of all the worthwhile things that won't get done. That alone is refreshing. Messages that shock, agitate, or produce inner stress are allowed to decompose while you blink out, with the phone muffled, blinds shut, dogs penned in the basement - or the office door closed, lights off. Ah bliss. And bliss again.
Naps have been around as long as cats and are almost as quick. Now, with less becoming more, they're heading back into popularity, the same way as the baked potato has come back from obscurity.
As kids, we valued naps. Remember kindergarten? At a certain time every afternoon, we lay down on our throw rugs under the watchful eye of the teacher, who patrolled the aisles to prevent spitballs and curl pullings. Now that's humane. Forget the chalk, the rocky boats, the little pig stores. Forget the "draw your house" or "tell us what you did last summer." We loved our naps.
You can't nap and be a bad person. Churchill napped. JFK napped. Many fine and successful people nap secretly. Always distrust a person too busy to nap. They're the ones who only take five minutes while their
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