Manifest Destiny

This is a post about sleep and sleeping. So you might ask why would I refer to it in terms of the philosophy (manifest destiny) the philosophy that justified the expansion by the fledgling United States to expand over the entire continent until it ran into the Pacific Ocean? Read on and all will be revealed.

First, I may or may not have revealed in a past post (I did a cursory search and couldn't find one but that doesn't mean anything as my labeling of posts has been poor in the past) that Wife and I sleep in separate bedrooms. This was a the result of a LONG and drawn out process of recognizing and talking about how our sleep habits had been changing and causing A LOT OF mutual unhappiness and lack of sleep. Did I mention how good sleep is really important to overall happiness? About a year or so ago we finally got over our preconceived notions and admitted we'd both be a lot happier, sleep better, and love each other more if we didn't share the same bedroom. Once done, I started to learn that there are a LOT more folks out there who have learned the same thing. That made me feel a whole lot better about our decision.

Now roll the film forward to the last few months. During most of my life I was very used to sleeping in a tight space. My Mother used to accuse me as a child of sleeping with as little movement as possible to allow the process of making my bed as easy as possible. Then as a married person over the many decades, I was used to 'staying on my side of the bed'. It was a drilled in habit. Even when I traveled on business, I would usually just stay on one narrow part of the bed.

But a few months ago, I had this realization. I was still just sleeping on a narrow part of the bed even though I had the whole bed now (a King size bed!). It dawned on me that I was wearing out the mattress unevenly. That was silly. I wanted the mattress to last a long time. I needed to use more of it.

AH HA! suddenly I discovered freedom, the ability to move over, to take over more space, my Manifest Destiny to conquer the entire bed and make it my own was unveiled! What a relief to my aging muscle ached body to just sprawl out and fling myself however I wanted 😀

There is the slight problem that when we are traveling and have the occasion when we have to share one bed that if feels like prison, but that is a small price to pay compared to the conquest of the entire bed at home!