What are you working on these days?

Sleep. Sleep is what I'm dreaming about these days. I'm supposing--a 'po' type of supposition, a la Edward de Bono--that sleep is our default state, not wakeful consciousness. Which would be the converse of what most of us believe. People say that the more you are awake, the more alive you are. Isn't that obvious?

Well yes, it might be. But that isn't to say that that is correct. And anyway, it is fun to consider the opposite.

See, when you go without sleep there is an urge, a desire, a compelling need to seek it. You die without it. Just like air, water and food, you can't live without it. So sleep at the least is very important. You can't deny that. And when we awake it is often a struggle. Usually we drag ourselves awake reluctantly. No one wouldn't mind an extra hour or two. It isn't as if we are endangering our survival with a lie-in.

Think of it this way. Compare the waking and the sleeping states as deep sea diving. But turn the ocean upside down. Sleep would be floating on the surface--our default state. When we come to consciousness in the morning, that is like kicking to submerge (or in the reversed state press up) into the depths. Which we enjoy. For a spell. Until our reserves of oxygen run out, and we are forced to regenerate back at the bottom (the surface) of the sea in the open air.

Conscious our wakefulness then boils down to the exploration of an unnatural state.