By Antonio Calipjo Go
Sleep is the suspension, partial or complete, of consciousness and voluntary bodily functions.
In Greek mythology, Hypnos was the deity who personified sleep. His Roman counterpart was Somnus.
Selene the moon came out at night to light up the world while her brother Helios the sun rested. One night, Selene saw Endymion, a young shepherd who fell asleep while guarding his flock. He was so young and handsome that she fell in love with him. Selene asked Zeus to grant Endymion eternal sleep so that he would always stay young. Endymion dreamt that he held the moon in his arms, not realizing that it was not a dream at all, for Selene bore him 50 daughters, all pale and beautiful as the moon, their mother.
In one of the rare times he left the Underworld, Hades saw Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, while she was gathering flowers in a meadow. Instantly falling in love with her, Hades caused the ground to rupture beneath her, out of which vaulted Hades in his chariot drawn by black horses. He seized the girl and plunged back into the ground. Demeter begged her brother Hades to return her daughter. Hades agreed to let Persephone live aboveground for six months of each year while the rest of the time she had to be by his side to be his queen. Her mother went into mourning each time Persephone left for the Underworld so that nothing grew and the sleep of winter was upon the earth, but as soon as her daughter returned, the earth sprang back to life and to spring again. Thus did the Greeks of old explain the changing of the seasons.
Winter is the coldest season of the year in polar and temperate zones. It is associated with freezing temperatures and snow, the time when the earth sleeps. An Ice Age is a more profound and prolonged winter, when ice sheets covered both the northern and southern hemispheres, when the earth is in the grip of a coma, asleep in a frozen prison without lock or key for eons on end.
Even volcanoes are known to sleep. When Mount Pinatubo awoke from its 500-year dormancy, its eruption caused a cataclysmic disturbance that forever changed the landscape of Central Luzon.
Scientists have successfully grown a date palm from a 2000-year-old seed dug up from the Judean desert, which makes this seed the oldest ever to germinate. This resurrected palm was nicknamed Methuselah, after the oldest person in the Bible. At night, some plants close their leaves or petals, as if to sleep. Many trees go to sleep during wintertime.
Hibernation is a state of inactivity and involuntary suspension of metabolic activities resorted to by animals such as bears, rodents, snakes, fish and amphibians, a way for them to survive the harsh winter months. It is characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and reduced heart-rate, not unlike what happens when we sleep. Aestivation is similar but it takes place during the summer.
Cicadas are insects belonging to the order of true bugs, Hemiptera. They produce an exceptionally loud song by rapidly vibrating drum-like membranes called tymbals near the base of their abdomen. Some species of cicadas spend most of their lives as underground nymphs, one of the stages in their metamorphosis, emerging from the ground after sleeping for 13 or 17 years. Cicadas have been featured in myth, folklore and literature as symbols of resurrection and immortality.
Tales of famous sleepers and sleepyheads abound in literature. Sleeping Beauty is a classic fairy tale about a princess who was cursed to sleep for a hundred years by an evil sorceress, and she can be awakened only by the kiss of a prince.
Washington Irving’s story Rip Van Winkle is about a Dutch-American villager in colonial America who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up 20 years later to find that the world had undergone a sea change.
Vampires are fictitious entities from folklore that subsist on the blood of the living. By day, they sleep the sleep of the undead inside underground crypts, awakening when the moon is full, raring to slake their thirst for blood.
The Resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus from the dead after his crucifixion. The death and resurrection of Christ form the bedrock of the Christian faith. His resurrection guarantees that all the Christian dead will awaken from the temporary sleep of death at the “second coming” of Christ. We commemorate Christ’s awakening each year at Easter, a joyful occasion for Christians all over the world.
Our brain sleeps when we forget; awakens when it remembers. The heart falls into fitful slumber when it hates but readily awakens, without fail, to the call of love. We die to be reborn. We lose our lives, that we may be found, by God. The one eternally-awake flower is the word of God. We sleep in order to awaken, at the end of times, to the last final morning of light and love. This, for me, is the enduring promise of Easter.
Note: Mr. Antonio C. Go is a 71 y.o. retired private school supervisor who has waged a crusade against error-riddled textbooks in the Philippines for the past 27 years.
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