The brain needs to process, digest, and divide up the welter of experiences that have been ingested, so the curtains are drawn, baby is laid down next to the soft toys, and soon it’s asleep and calm descends. Everyone knows that life is going to be a lot more manageable again in an hour.
Sadly, we exercise no such caution with ourselves. We schedule a week in which we’re going to see friends every night, in which we’re going to do 12 meetings (three of them requiring a lot of preparation), where we’ll make a quick overnight dash to another country on the Wednesday, where we’ll watch three films, read 14 newspapers, change six pairs of sheets, have five heavy meals after 8 PM, and drink 30 cups of coffee. Then, we lament that our lives are not as calm as they might be and that we’re close to mental collapse.
We refuse to take seriously how much of our babyhood is left inside our adult selves and, therefore, how much care we have to take to keep things simple.