While laying in bed tonight not sleeping I began to wonder about the phrase “Sleep like a baby.” I have a baby and, watching her sleep, it’s obvious why someone would come up with the phrase “sleep like a baby” to describe pure, untroubled, peaceful sleep. But why does a baby sleep so well? Why is a sleeping baby such a good example of serenity? I think it’s because they don’t have much to think about.
The thoughts that trouble us in waking life also have their sleep-time equivalents. My baby doesn’t have anything to think about by day: she’s still busy learning to deal with the immediate objects of her perception. If she’s not seeing a ball right now then she’s not thinking about a ball.
My two year old, however, has a more complex understanding of the world. She can not only identify objects in her environment but also map representations she sees on television to objects in her real life. Action seen on television is recalled and mulled over later. She sees Shrek yelling at Donkey and knows that this must be a moment of tension in the movie because she relates it to times when daddy has yelled at her. Later, when she dreams of Shrek, she dreams about him yelling at donkey, and then she dreams about him yelling at her, and then she dreams about daddy yelling at her, and then she wakes up inconsolable because she’s convinced daddy’s mad at her.
I have bad dreams for the same reason as my two year old: my mind rehearses and personalized the jagged edges of the day trying to make some sense of them. But I take the problem one step further: I don’t wait for sleep to replay and search for meaning; I begin as soon as I have a moment to think. I begin and then I can’t fall asleep.