Samuel Johnson is a brilliant essayist and 1700s pop psychologist. I’m reading a selection of his essays from “The Rambler” and “The Idler” [Amazon link]. I re-wrote the following essays in my own words; the exercise helps me explore writing styles, voices and phrasing.
Here it is! A re-write of Samuel Johnson on Sleep, no. 32 in “The Idler”.
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People rarely think deeply about common activities. They confuse familiarity with knowledge, thinking they understand such things because they are used to them. But the thinking man looks deeper, knowing that the more he learns the less he understands.
Take, for example, sleep. A great part of our lives are spent sleeping. Every animal sleeps; some philosophers think vegetables sleep, too. Yet with something this important, we don’t know the cause, we can’t explain how falling asleep works and we’re unsure what precise benefits we receive from rest.
There are many theories, but none touch the truth. Sleep affects us all, the loud and the timid, the industrious and the lazy, the happy and the melancholy. Philosophers have long stated that all are equal in death. Sleep does the same: both the rich and poor succumb to its spell.
It is said that Alexander the Great thought himself a mortal only by his need for sleep. Whether he found it useful or not, to him it was a sign of human weakness: a body that needs sleep so regularly, yet dies so quickly.
No matter what emotional state we are in, no matter how passionate and absorbed we are, we eagerly await sleep. We will always retreat to sleep, casting aside a day good or bad, removing our senses and disabling our mental faculties.
Why then are we so greedy, ambitious and jealous? Even he who has everything is separated from his riches in slumber. Differences between us are more superficial than real, when the strong and timid, the famous and workaday, all desire that state of unconscious bliss.
We value sleep so highly that few are happy with its quality. Alexander would use wine as an aid, and almost every man has some trick to quicken its approach.
We spend little of life doing important things. Our time is passed in an equivocal fog. Daydreams, musings and idle thoughts disappear as quickly as they come, and soon the day is gone.
For some, their happiest moments are spent in solitary reflections, lost in their imagination, dreaming of untold riches and incomparable power, fancying a fascinating and luxurious life. For others, solitude is frightening, and they retreat to constant companionship. But the difference is slight; in solitude we wrap ourselves in our dreams, and in socializing we share them. The goal of both is to forget ourselves.
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And here’s an original version.