On tiredness...

Occasionally I will read the stories of saints and ascetics who kept all sorts of vigils and often went for long periods of time without sleep. I understand the sense of wanting to keep watchful and always in prayer but the reality of it is so very abstract from my life.

It seems to me that for most Orthodox who live outside of monasteries it may not be about watchfulness at all but about sleep. The world is busy and growing busier. The pace keeps quickening. The amount of time for any one thing grows shorter even as the list of things to do grows longer. We may soon approach the point where our souls and body simply cannot bear the accumulated weight of the time and events of our life.

We need to sleep.

Now some of these thoughts can be attribued to the fact this is Bright Week and the hangover from Pascha is still upon me. But studies also show that we Americans, anyways, are chronically sleep deprived. We have a million things to do and just a few hours to make it all happen and the one thing that gets set aside is rest. How much caffeine is in the average American's blood at any one time? That would be an interesting question.

And that fatigue that's part and parcel of what we now know as "normal" life is the devil's playground. Tired people, overworked people, stressed out people are ripe for the picking, prone to making bad judgements, too busy to mull things over and separate the good from the bad, unable to reflect on the meaning of things by being perpetually in the heat of the moment and vulnerable to temptations in the weakness created by restless doing. The world has become a whining selfish child and even the best of us may say yes to something we know isn't good just to shut the little brat up.

Without the constant noise of the world the monastic or hermit may truly be able to keep watch through the night. But those of us who live outside that solitude may more often then not just need to get to bed and be rested for the challenges of the next day.