I lie, half-awake, in bed.  My body is not comfortable.

If I try to fall asleep anyway, my sleep will probably be disturbed; but I know that if I wake up enough to make my body comfortable, my sleep will be more sound, and deeper.   So I do that.

I notice that my body avoids each little discomfort: cold air on one part of the body, a lump in the blanket under me, an ache.  From each one, it recoils.  I was both asleep and awake, both relaxed and tense—until I awoke a little.  Only then could I see that I had very few choices.

I am disturbed by some half-sensed, conflicting feelings; my feelings are not at all comfortable.

Here it is the same: to try and be less aware, but still disturbed, or to wake enough to see all of the feelings at once and sort them out.   I see that—again—I have very few choices.  Here again I choose between passivity and waking.

I am in conflict, undecided.  Some thoughts say yes, some say no, and all seem equally valid and true.  Does my thought recoil from the conflict, the contradictions; does it shut down and avoid further thoughts?  Am I again in the same situation as I was in bed, with few choices?  What would constitute being active and more awake?

Like the bars in a prison cell, these half-sensed sources of discomfort imprison me, restrict my movement, limit my choices.  Like bars, there’s no use in banging on them, in fighting them, in getting more tense.

I relax.  I seem to be without choice.  I relax.  Something which was asleep in me wakes.  The bars of my prison become ordinary aches, or sorrows, or confusion.

If I insist on not suffering, the price is imprisonment.

.                       Lou Gottlieb                        12/22/2013