“In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisions an endless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence, while counting them as they do so. The idea, presumably, is to induce boredom while occupying the mind with something simple, repetitive, and rhythmic, all of which are known to help humans sleep.” – Wikipedia
For who does counting sheep work for? When has anyone benefited from counting, late at night, sheep jumping over a fence one by one? By the time I get to 16-17 I ask myself “what the hell am I doing?”.
How high is the fence that you have your sheep jump over? Do you superimpose the number sheep you are on? Are the sheep fluffy or trim? I think part of the problem is that we conjure an image of a nice DAY. At 3AM, an image of a cool sunny day on a picturesque farm is not aiding in my attempt at slumber. Also, through no fault of my own I count the sheep as if I’m the Count from Sesame Street; “1….1 sheep. 2….2 sheep. 3…3 sheep!” and so on. This makes my thoughts digress even further when I wish to have no thoughts at all. I think of my childhood perhaps, or vampires, or that I’m going to write all of this down in a stupid blog post. Associative memories splinter out into infinity, feeding one off of the next. All I want to do is sleep until I realize the culprit is sheep I should never have started to count. Or is it something else?
We hold brilliantly glowing screens in front of our faces as we lay in bed until our arms get too tiered to hold them. We work and chat and ponder and post and watch when we surely should be doing something else. Instead, we’re insane insomniacs driven mad by tricking our eyes into believing it’s waking hours and our minds into believing that without a phone we’re all alone.
Goodnight,
MBD
