Either sleep is overrated or it’s unappreciated. I often find myself working or writing late into the night, fighting the sandman, wondering if I can just get one more thing done before I drag myself off to bed. And in the morning I struggle to get out of bed, cursing myself for not going to bed earlier. And then the cycle repeats itself. We are creatures of the light, but our brains get tired and full of stuff, so we need sleep to help clear the brain drain and get ready for another day. Recharge the depleted batteries, stretch out the tired muscles, close the aching eyes, shut down the mind entirely for a short period while repairs are being made. Sleep seems like an emergency therapy to repair all the broken synapses that snapped during the day, unable to make ends meet mentally. Yet, I often find sleep to be a safe harbor, a refuge against disaster, a haven against tragedy, and an oasis for the mind. Whether I’m running a meeting, debating a proposal, working with insane software, searching for something lost, delivering a lecture in my second language or straightening out a student’s botched schedule so they can graduate, I put a heavy stress on my mind to come up with new answers, make sense of old ones, ferret out the truth, be sympathetic to someone who needs to vent, repress my own feelings of anger when I am wronged. By the time I have put in a full day, there is not much left upstairs, and I notice that sleep is calling. I have written about sleep, about the lack of same, about insomnia, about sleepiness, about napping, about curling up in a warm, soft bed and drifting off into oblivion, but sleep is still a mystery. Simulating death, we give up our consciousness willingly to rest our minds, imagining all the while that we will wake up again. We must have a lot of faith in our biological functions if we take that for granted, but I would also suggest we have no choice. Without sleep, we would be insane zombies trying like mad to kill each other. Their is no alternative but to lay in the sweet arms of sleep and give ourselves away for eight hours. Sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep, sometimes it’s hard to wake up, but the relaxation that sleep offers is both balm to the tired soul and a refuge for the weary.