I'm talking with my students this week about life lessons learned, and I share with them something I once heard and stand by:
Sometimes, the difference between hope and despair is simply a good night's sleep.
Today, as I worked from home, dragging in several ways both physical and mental, I remember this wisdom. I haven't been sleeping well at night, and I've felt off. I'm cranky. Decisions are harder to make. Small issues — like Google telling me that my Gmail storage is 100% full, or my repeatedly inability to figure out the school district's new app that's supposed to "streamline" communication, whatever that means — feel like impossible problems to hurdle, rather than simple tasks to complete.
How am I even an adult? I moan, while wandering my house looking for chocolate.
That's when I remember the adage about a good night's sleep. And, a minute later, that's when I decide to take an afternoon nap. I rarely nap, unless I'm miserably sick, but on a day when I was on the verge of feeling miserably blah, it seemed like the right thing.
As I slipped under the covers, I melted — melted, I tell you — into the bed. Everything that was wrong felt much less wrong, and for a blissful hour, I slept. I woke feeling refreshed, like I had been rebooted.
It reminds me of the story of Elijah in the Bible when Elijah was so downcast that he wanted to die, and — I paraphrase here — God is like, "Take a nap, eat a snack."
Sometimes, the difference between hope and despair really is that simple.
