Sometimes, your evening consists of watching a movie, making a cup of tea and going to bed by 9:30 p.m., relaxed as ever. And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, you wake up with the lights on, your laptop upside down, flung across the other side of your bed and your textbook crimped and half-open.
It’s not pretty, but there’s something honorable about it. As much as we claim to crave these fleeting moments of relaxation, we rarely indulge in them. Or, at least, we feel guilty when we do. As if it’s absurd to ever think about spending your night taking a long shower or doing yoga or even — dare I say it — getting eight hours of sleep. To do so seems to come with the cost of sacrificing something else. I can’t sleep because I have to study, I can’t get dinner because I have to finish this essay, and I can’t breathe because I’m choking on this chemistry lab.
It makes a lot of sense. School is hard, work is hard and life is hard. Sometimes you have to sacrifice some sleep in order to finish that assignment or study those last few terms. That cup of tea will have to wait.
And maybe that would be the end of it. But these sleepless nights and incidents of excess have become exhaustingly common, to the point that they’re expected — a natural part of life. We even brag about our own suffering, as if to show that we’re working the hardest. What was once a means of letting off steam, telling people, “I got four hours of sleep last night,” has become a competition. Someone will respond, “Well, I got three hours. I always get three hours.”
As if, somehow, this makes them the winner: brave, powerful and dedicated.
It has gotten to the point that, if you’re not losing sleep, you’re not working hard enough. If you’re not in the library until 2 a.m., you have it easy. If you’re not holding two jobs, the president of three clubs and spending hours and hours and hours on homework, you’re probably just lazy. Dark circles under the eyes have become a mark of accomplishment.
But let’s back up. We all have late nights, weeks where we’re overwhelmed, times where we just need to blow off steam and complain to our friends and family members about how hard it’s been. It’s healthy to do that and absolutely encouraged. Venting is not the issue.
The issue is the culture of competitive misery. As if we must outdo one another by getting the least amount of sleep and depriving ourselves of basic necessities in favor of “hard work” and “winning.” That is an important distinction. There is a difference between bonding with peers over shared struggles and submitting to a culture of excessiveness. We tend to view others’ accomplishments through a kaleidoscope of intimidation, demeaning the value of our own successes. And that’s the reason why we’re always trying to prove how hard we’re working, how much of ourselves we’re sacrificing: to somehow assert that we’re working to the max.
My dad used to tell me about the time some kid he knew ordered 80 chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. He ate 79 of them, but couldn’t finish the last one. Just one nugget left, and he couldn’t do it. It used to drive me crazy thinking about that. What more is one chicken nugget after you’ve already had 79?
I think we tend to do a similar thing with our homework, our jobs and our lives. We do so much and work so hard, but still beat ourselves up that we can’t do everything. We stretch ourselves so thin that we’re up until 3:00 a.m., unable to eat just one chicken nugget. And then we “brag” about it, expecting to be honored.
The bottom line: work hard, but don’t work so hard that you’re diminishing yourself. Vent, but don’t make it a competition. Push yourself, but don’t let others intimidate you so much. I know it’s probably easier said than done, but it’s something to think about. So let yourself relax. There’s something honorable about that, too.
