By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
A most memorable, but embarrassing, chapter of my childhood is that time when I told my mother I hated pre-school nap hour. She sent in a note asking for an exemption. Actively avoiding naps…what the heck was I thinking?
It was a foolish notion that persisted for much of my youth. In fact, prior to college, I can think of only two times when I abandoned this shortsighted anti-nap attitude.
One was on cold school-day mornings, when I locked myself in the bathroom and fell back asleep on the heating vent. This irritated my mother to no end, because she was trying to get me to school on time. She pounded on the door, reminded me of the time, and demanded to know if I had gone back to sleep. With a weak and drowsy voice, I denied dozing off and then finally started getting ready for school.
The other time, described in my new book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021), also involved my search for warmth in the winter months, but this time at the old Abbey of the Holy Trinity Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of the book:
“My own search for Holy Trinity heat ended…in the elegantly simple monastery church. The beautiful church was large, stark, and quite cold. One frigid winter’s night we arrived there early, for Compline, which would not start for another thirty minutes. The church was completely dark and overwhelmingly peaceful and quiet. Mom and [my sister] Karen went upstairs. I decided to stay downstairs and check out something I had noticed hidden in a corner. It was a flat-topped, metal box, strategically positioned in an out-of-the-way space under the stairs. Eureka! A heating vent of some kind.
I strolled over and sat on it. Nothing. I waited. Nothing. I started to give up and leave when I suddenly heard a staccato set of clicking sounds. They were strange and non-rhythmic. Click. Click, click, click, click. Click, click. I sat there, eagerly anticipating. All at once, almost miraculously, hot air began to flow out of the vent slats. I was warm, deliriously and deliciously warm. I sat there for several minutes, under the stairs, in the dark, staring at a solo candle burning on a nearby altar. My head grew heavy and my body light. My soul seemed to levitate and I experienced what may have been a deep mystical feeling. Or perhaps I just dozed off for a few minutes. Either way, it was divine.”
In college at Notre Dame, and during law school at the University of Utah, I finally discovered and embraced the power and joy of the 15-minute nap. Doing so was a matter of pure necessity. I carried a heavy academic load and worked part-time, which resulted in many late-night study sessions. Napping was an essential tool for getting through the day.
I soon learned that I had joined a good company of nappers. The list of famous people who believed regular afternoon snoozes enhanced their creativity and productivity includes Thomas Edison, Salvador Dali, John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher.
Even my friends the Utah Trappist monks were known to take little cat naps when possible. Famous Kentucky Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton had retired to his room for a nap on the sad day when a fan accidentally electrocuted him. Writer and poet Kathleen Norris, in The Cloister Walk, explains how one old Trappist abbot once said, “For my part, when I see a brother who is dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest.”
I can even make a decent argument that Jesus believed in naps. After all, in Genesis 2:3, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Moreover, Matthew 8:23-24 reports how Jesus got into a boat with his disciples after preaching and then “[s]uddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping.”
A brief power nap almost always refreshes, awakens, and revitalizes me. WebMD confirms this point, “A short nap in the mid-afternoon can boost memory, improve job performance, lift your mood, make you more alert, and ease stress. Cozy up to these nap benefits.”
One must be careful, however, when using this powerful life tool. I try to nap in private, if possible, to avoid exposing too many innocent people to common nap side effects such as drool face and bed head. Also, the nap cannot effectively replace regular sleep at night.
Sleep experts also warn that naps longer than 15-30 minutes will put you in a full sleep cycle and leave you drowsy rather than refreshed. Accordingly, Einstein used to hold something in his hands while he napped. Soon after he dozed off and relaxed his grip, the object fell to the floor, made a noise, and woke him up. Fortunately, today I can just set an alarm on my cell phone.
Despite my preference for private nap sessions, I also admit to occasional power naps in some unusual public places. The University of Notre Dame library is one, but also in airports, a tour bus in Ireland, and even near the entrance of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. We had just finished a tour of the Athens museum while waiting to check into our hotel after a long night of air travel. The jet lag took its toll.
I did not need my cell phone wake-up alarm that day because after just a few moments of unintended shuteye, a museum security guard shouted something quite unpleasant at me in very loud Greek. I don’t speak Greek, but I sure understood him. This aborted nap did not have the usual refreshing effects, so we had to rely on mocha gelato a few minutes later at a shop in the Plaka surrounding the Acropolis, which worked deliciously well.
As parents, my wife Vicki and I learned—sometimes the hard way— how naps are essential to creating and maintaining contended children and amiable adults. As a result, whenever possible during trips and vacations, we scheduled afternoon rest and nap breaks for them and for us.
In fact, it is in raising children that I realized how my position on napping had changed so significantly—making a full 180 degree turn. One day I heard my parental voice telling our oldest daughter Erin (then about 8 years old) that she eventually would regret every nap she failed to take.
It was part desperate plea and part candid self-assessment. Erin ignored me at the time. Today, however, she is an adult with her own career and her own young child. She now agrees with me completely.
Indeed, I am such a fan of midday rests now that I can make a bold assertion—they could have changed the course of Biblical history. For example, in Matthew 26:40, the apostles kept falling asleep while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane right after the Last Supper. If only they had taken naps!
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.
Another winner. Thanks.