“We traded midnight thoughts for morning coffee and called it progress“ -- YNOT
In the old days — before the glow of cell phones, neon signs, and the 24-hour news cycle — people had the good sense to divide their nights in two. They called it first sleep and second sleep. Between the two, they’d wake quietly, light a candle, stoke the fire, whisper to God, make love, or just sit and think.
They didn’t call it insomnia. They called it life.
Modern science has now stumbled upon what our great-great-grandparents already knew: left in natural darkness, the human body naturally falls into this rhythm — about four hours of deep rest, a little spell of wakeful peace, then another four hours of dreaming. In the 1990s, a researcher proved it in a lab: he gave people fourteen hours of darkness every night, and by the third week, they were sleeping like their ancestors — twice, with calm reflection in between.
Then came the lightbulb.
And factories.
And deadlines.
Suddenly, the night became an extension of the day, and “progress” meant fewer stars, more coffee, and the first alarm clocks. Sleep became industrialized, crammed into a single block so we could serve the machine instead of the moon. We forgot that waking at 3 a.m. might be the most natural thing in the world.
Now, when we wake in the quiet hours, we panic — as if nature has failed us. But maybe that’s the hour we were meant to breathe, to listen, to remember.
Maybe that’s when the soul wakes up to whisper what the world is too loud to hear.
🕰️ Sleeping Over the Ages
For most of human history, sleep followed the sun and the seasons.
- Cavemen and campfires: Early humans slept lightly, in shifts, to guard the fire and fend off predators. Safety was found in numbers — and in naps.
- Agrarian eras: Farmers rose with the roosters, slept after dusk, and often caught that midnight interlude between first and second sleep. That was the time to pray for rain or check on a newborn calf.
- Medieval Europe: Diaries, letters, and even court records describe “first sleep” as common knowledge. People spoke of it the way we speak of breakfast. There were songs, prayers, even jokes about the time “between sleeps.”
- Industrial Age: Gaslight, kerosene, and later electricity stretched the day into night. Work became clock-driven instead of sun-driven, and the natural rhythm of rest fractured.
- Modern Age: The 8-hour workday demanded the 8-hour sleep — a tidy, factory-approved block. But in the rush to be productive, we lost touch with the deeper rhythm of rest — that quiet island between dreams.
Now, science is rediscovering what history forgot: human sleep isn’t broken — it was rearranged. The body still remembers. When you wake in the middle of the night, you’re not malfunctioning; you’re practicing an ancient art.
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So the next time you find yourself wide awake at 3 a.m., don’t curse the darkness. Light a candle instead. The night still belongs to thinkers, dreamers, and souls who remember that rest is more than sleep — it’s communion with the quiet side of the universe.
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