To Snooze or Not to Snooze?
In Milan Kundera’s novel "Immorality," snoozing is described as “that marvellous swinging between wakefulness and sleep which in itself is enough to keep us from regretting our birth.” To snooze your alarm is to give in to this “marvellous swinging.” To stop your alarm is to deny it. These two very different acts draw the line that divides two very different people.
Steven Meisel / © Art+Commerce via British Vogue
The moment in which you must choose whether to snooze or not is a precarious one. Awoken suddenly by your alarm, you find yourself on the frontiers of consciousness and unconsciousness, sleep and wakefulness, day and night. For a moment or two, you hover there, neither one nor the other, your feet dangling over both edges. You are faced with a dilemma: to snooze or not to snooze? How, in this state, you answer this question determines the type of person you are.
In coming to his decision, the snoozer is unable to think beyond the present state he finds himself in. Snoozing makes you late; snoozing prolongs the agony of waking up; snoozing makes you feel worse. Even though he knows this, hovering there on the ledge between night and day, he is unable to choose the morning as he only has eyes for the darkness of the night. As such, with the first ring of his alarm, he rolls over, hits the snooze button, and sinks back into unconsciousness, only to repeat this action ten minutes later, gradually falling into a deeper, more profound slumber. He doesn’t fight the swinging, but rather, he lets it run its course. Swaddled in a cocoon of sleep, he tosses and turns from one side of the bed to the other in a gentle state of limbo.
On the other hand, this swinging is pointless torture for the non-snoozer. Finding himself in that precarious moment, he, unlike the snoozer, is able to see the light of the morning and, on the cusp of sleep and wakefulness, something inside of him urges him to grab for consciousness. This is why, with the first ring of his alarm, he is awake and on his feet. He sees no reason in prolonging something that is inevitable – dragging out something that must happen. Why fall back asleep when you have already done the hard part of waking up? Why submit to this “swinging” when you can seize the day?
On two sides of this line, then, we have two very different people. I myself reside on that side where you find the snoozers. I cannot quite fathom how, awoken by their alarm, one does not opt for the snooze button. This is because to snooze is to float. The steady ringing and postponing of my alarm every morning create that “marvellous swinging” in which I pass like water back and forth between wakefulness and sleep. It is the sweetness of this spot that makes it worth it. Indeed, it’s important to state here that we do not only snooze because we struggle to wake up but also because we delight and revel in this swinging. And so, as well as two different people, we have two very different approaches on opposite sides of this line. The snoozer sets his alarm hours before he needs to wake up while the non-snoozer sets it for exactly the time he wants to rise. The snoozer gets to wallow and dream for longer, but almost always risks being late. The non-snoozer gets no such warmth, no extra leeway from his pillow, but has the certainty of seizing every morning.
But what is better – is it to snooze or not to snooze?
For the answer to this, we must turn to the internet. Unsurprisingly, the evidence in favour of snoozing was rather weak. The very best Time Out magazine could say was that “it’s probably not as bad as what they’re telling you.” The case against snoozing, however, is more definitive and clear-cut. According to Health magazine, snoozing your alarm disrupts your REM sleep; it triggers a rise in blood pressure; it causes sleep inertia; it’s generally bad for your health; and it is probably symptomatic of a larger sleeping problem.
But the key thing here is that the snoozer already knows this. He doesn’t need to read a scientific magazine to tell you. Snoozing your alarm, as much as it feels nice, is counterproductive. When you hit the snooze button, you do so because you are too tired to start the day or because you enjoy snoozing. The problem is that you fall back into a lighter, less refreshing sleep and wake up feeling more disoriented and groggier than before. Knowing this, experiencing it every morning, the snoozer still chooses to snooze. It is precisely this that separates him from the non-snoozer. Productivity plays no part in his thought process. Reason, logic, theory has no place in that “marvellous swinging.” And so, whilst the non-snoozer will act on the information out there and try not to snooze, the snoozer, even in the face of cold, hard scientific facts, will always choose the warm snuggle of his pillow.
This, then, is ultimately what pencils in and highlights that line that separates him from the non-snoozer.
