Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
Interpretation
Insomnia feeds on thoughts, often forcing the mind to dwell on the very act of trying not to think.
This quote highlights the paradox of insomnia, where the struggle to find peace in sleep can intensify one's thoughts rather than silence them. Clifton Fadiman suggests that even the effort to avoid thinking can become a source of nourishment for the restless mind, leading to an endless cycle of overthinking and disturbance.
In practice
During a talk on mental health, I shared this quote to illustrate the struggles of insomnia.
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Background checks will never stop every criminal from getting their hands on a gun and every single act of gun violence - but the evidence is clear that it's the single most effective policy to help keep guns out of dangerous hands and save lives.
Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water.
Speak only that which will bring you honor.
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
A Warrior of Light needs love._x000D_ _x000D_ Love and affection are part of his nature._x000D_ _x000D_ He makes use of solitude, _x000D_ _x000D_ but is not used by it.
What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that's how I approached the part.
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