Forgetting How To Sleep

There's a great line in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where Ford Prefect explains the secret of flying to Arthur Dent: you just have to throw yourself at the ground, and miss. To paraphrase Adams, the knack lies in ignoring the ground entirely, and (this is the hard part) ignoring the fact that it is going to hurt quite a lot if you fail to miss it.

I bring this up because I was up until 2:30 a.m. last night, lying in bed, tossing and turning, trying to sleep, and it occurred to me that slumber is a lot like Adams' take on personal flight. It's not something you (or at least, me) can will yourself to do. It just ... happens. And it happens best when you're not thinking about it.

But you can't "not think about it" too hard, because ignoring the fact that you're trying to fall asleep will inevitably bring you back to the awareness that you are trying to fall asleep, and you end up in a vicious cycle of sleepy/non-sleepy thoughts that leaves you bleary eyed at 2:30 a.m., wondering if other people also forget how to sleep.