If You Can't Sleep, Then...?

Those of you that are associated with me on Facebook know that I recently posted something relating directly to this very title/lyric. And that's okay. Using it twice isn't necessarily milking it dry so to speak. It's just a deep thought, and I couldn't fully expound on it in the typical Facebook format.

Before we continue, I'd like to share a fear. We all have them. This is one of mine.

I'm just about always thinking about how I present myself. The words I say, the gestures I use, etc. It's always been worrisome to me, how people perceive me, and what I'm doing to fuel those thoughts, opinions, and feelings/emotions. I always want to be understood perfectly, for humans are complicated beings, and one wrong word can throw off the meaning of an entire sentence. From that standpoint of incurred comprehensive paranoia, I tend to go one of two directions. Either I take way too long thinking about the perfect phrasing of a thought I intend to share, or I will simply talk and talk and carry on, stringing sentences and phrases together in hopes of accurately portraying, over time, the big picture that I've had in my head since the beginning of the discussion.

Simply put, its like a mosaic. Either I'll put the mosaic together in my head, and kinda just be chillin in this awkward silence until I have it ready to present, or I'll just chuck all of these pieces out into the conversation in hopes that you will be able to tell what the picture is by the pieces themselves. Make sense?

That's not what I fear though.

What I sometimes fear is that through this means of communication, I come off as somebody other than what I am. I fear that these big words and fancy phrasing will scare people off. That people will think I'm trying too hard to sound smart or sophisticated or fancy or whatever.

That's what I fear.

On to the actual thought for this post though:

"When you can't sleep, well, you can't dream,

When you can't dream, well, what's life mean?"

On Facebook I had simply said to get your sleep, cause it's important. And it is. I'm gonna go a little deeper though, so strap in.

Not getting sleep by choice is different than not being able to get sleep. Those nights when you have so much on your mind that you can't possibly just shut it all down for the night. Those nights when all you can think about is how you should've handled it, or how it should've gone, or what you should've said, or what you should've done, or what's going to happen, or what you want to happen, or what needs to happen for things to go right.

Those ones.

I've had those ones.

When you have all of that on your mind, you can't get a good nights sleep, and poor sleep means no dreams. All those problems in your head? Those battles raging? Those will prevent you from dreaming too. Not the sleepy-time dreaming though. From planning for the future. For coming up with a game-plan. If you're stuck thinking about the mistakes of the past, you can't take actions towards your future in the here and now.

When you can't dream (again, not the sleepy-time dreaming), you get stuck in a rut. When you can't come up with a plan for your future, because of the past, or you can't take action towards a future you have planned, because of the past, then life loses its meaning.

So the Blog Remix of that particular song lyric would either be:

"When regret and fear keeps you awake at night, then you can't act towards your future, and when you can't act towards your future, well what's life mean at that point?"

Or

"When you can't sleep, well you can't enter REM-sleep, and when you can't enter REM-sleep, then that's kinda boring and I'm sorry that nighttime is that dull for you. That's gotta suck. I can't imagine never having dreams."

So yeah, two options. One's a bit more serious than the other. And also neither of them would actually fit into a song cause, you know, rhyme scheme and stuff.

That's all I've got for tonight.

-Dominic Romeo

12:03 AM EST

1/15/2021 AD