If you ever find yourself awake in the middle of the night – I mean, waking up in the middle of the night after being asleep – this experience is probably familiar to you. Thoughts can seem entirely profound: life is to be lived! I never truly understood that – life is to be lived! And then, in the light of day, the profundity just isn’t there. Well, yeah, life is to be lived. And thoughts can seem entirely bleak and hopeless, too. Problems so huge, woes unresolvable, pressures unbearable – but when the day comes around, they really don’t seem so awful. I finally learned to say that to myself when I’m lost in the dark: even though it feels hopeless, you know it’s going to seem much better tomorrow, during the day, even if that really doesn’t seem possible right now. It doesn’t stop the paralyzing thoughts, but it does help me make it through to the morning without totally freaking out. I have had the experience of profundity gone banal, but much more often, it’s the bleakness of problems that haunts my middle-night waking, and it’s a very strange state. I lie there in a kind of suspended way, with thoughts swirling all around me, like electric chaos. My eyes are open, but I don’t feel anchored in any way.

Why is that! What is it about the middle of the night that can drive thoughts to the extremes like that? I don’t think it’s just the quiet, or the dark; I have gone into my office during the day, closed the door, and lowered the blinds so it’s pretty dark, and find that my thoughts just get clearer. I think the push to extremity must come from something within us, something about the contrast from the sleeping state. Maybe something FROM the sleeping state. I don’t know – do you have any ideas about this?