Not being able to get enough sleep is extremely frightening. We panic over why we cannot sleep, we panic over how we will meet the demands of the next day and then we panic over how little time is left for us to catch some sleep.

Our generation has probably only one solution for insomnia – pills, especially those that are powerful enough to subdue our consciousness.

But instead of immediately popping pills into our system we must ask ourselves from where in human nature does insomnia spring. And what the phenomenon might be trying to tell us. Insomnia seems like a revenge for something we’ve forgotten to pay much attention to during the day – think.

Most of us have thousands of things running on our minds in a day but these matters do not address our deeper needs of direction, purpose and principles. 

And that’s where philosophy steps in. You might want to think that only certain academics can philosophize but we all have such meaningful questions lying in our inner recesses, at the end of the day. And we must keep asking ourselves from time to time, in what direction our life is headed or if we are adequately exploring our talents or how fruitful are our values. Some of these questions are so essential that when not addressed during daylight, our conscience decides to deprive us of our sleep and address them.

Insomnia is a way for our system to tell us that we must confront the issues we’ve been running away from, that we must give ourselves a chance to think.