There is a whole lexicon of words for nighttime fears.
Here are a few:

Clinophobia: fear of going to bed
Eosophobia: fear of dawn
Hypnophobia: fear of sleep
Insomniphobia: fear of not sleeping
Noctiphobia: fear of the night
Nyctohylophobia: fear of forests at night
Oneirophobia: fear of dreams
Oneirogmophobia: fear of wet dreams
Optophobia: fear of opening your eyes
Siderophobia: fear of stars
Somniphobia: fear of sleep

 

There are plenty of us who hold our fears tight, cuddle up with them, take them to bed with us. In some ways, the disrupted sleep of the world is a reflection of the levels of anxiety people take to bed with them.

One of the less commonly acknowledged resources for improving sleep (and relieving anxiety) is the conscious practice of surrender or letting go. There used to be an old word for this. It was forgiveness. It is another lost art. It can be a difficult medicine that leads to improved health.

There is a wonderful sequence toward the end of Homer’s Iliad, an epic about the Trojan war. The Iliad is so distinct from The Odyssey that scholars debate whether or not they could come from the same source. These works were formed over centuries, although one devotee of Homer, Adam Nicolson, has pointed out that however much they vary in style they are held together by a guiding vision:

Homer reeks of long use. His wisdom, his presiding, god-like presence over the tales he tells, is the product of deep retrospect, not immediate reportage. His poetry … is also driven by the demands of grief, a clamouring and desperate anxiety about the nature of existence and the pains of mortality.

Homer, whoever or whatever he may have been, created works that were centuries old before even Socrates started teasing his fellow citizens of Athens. But they have an understanding of humanity that keeps them well and truly alive.

Near the finale of The Iliad, the Greeks have been camped out for ten years, and the Trojans have spent the same time stuck behind walls. Eventually, Achilles, the Greek hero, does battle with Hector, the son of Troy’s King Priam. Achilles kills Hector and decides to drag his body around and around the walled city to taunt the Trojans. He does this for days on end. Priam does not sleep during all this time. He stands on the battlements of Troy, keeping watch over the degradation of the body of his beloved son. He is exhausted in every way.

Then a curious thing happens. Priam steps down from the regal trappings of his position to assume an unfamiliar role, that of a simple father. He leaves a role and becomes a human being, making his way to the tent of mighty Achilles to ask for the body of his son. He expects to be killed. But Priam has not reckoned on the fact that the whole world is now tired of conflict and aggression. It is heartily sick of the macho posturing and muscle flexing of men. It needs something different, and humility is suddenly powerful.

At the key moment of The Iliad, one of the pivotal points in all of literature, Achilles offers Priam a souvlaki: lamb, roasted on a rotisserie spit, cut into pieces, and served in bread. The souvlaki is hardly a royal feast. But it does what the sharing of food and hospitality has done for ages. It creates healing and community. The souvlaki is a symbol of forgiveness and reconciliation. Priam finds that his sense of taste, which grief has dulled, returns. Immediately, both Achilles and Priam are ready to sleep:

Priam broke the silence first:
Put me to bed quickly, Achilles, Prince.
Time to rest, to enjoy the sweet relief of sleep.
Not once have my eyes closed shut beneath my lids
From the day my son went down beneath your hands …
Day and night I groan, brooding over the countless griefs,
Groveling in the dung that fills my walled-in court.

Achilles sets up exquisite bedding for them both in the porch, that liminal place between the inner and outer world.

This is not just an experience that belongs in ancient texts. Even closer to home, there was a time when Benny was ten years old when he was plagued by the most devastating anxiety. He was sleeping badly, often turning up in our bedroom at ungodly times. Indeed, there was a period in which we had to get a secondhand mattress and put it on the floor of our room, because Benny simply couldn’t sleep on his own. A contributing factor was the way he had been bullied at his school. We ended up having to move him to a different school.

Around this time, I took part in a radio program for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) on the theme of forgiveness. The other guest was Mpho Tutu, the daughter of Desmond Tutu, who has long been one of my personal heroes. Together with her father, Mpho had written a work called The Book of Forgiving, a result of the journeys both father and daughter had traveled. Among his many commitments, Desmond Tutu had been the chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission between 1995 and 2000, a post from which he saw quite intimately how tangled and complicated forgiveness can be. Yet Tutu writes about forgiveness with no podium, only with deep humility. He talks about the difference between forgiveness and weakness. In fact, they are opposites. He also explains that forgiveness is not a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end. It is often rather more like putting a puzzle together. Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things anybody can do for their own well-being. Both father and daughter have written about the positive impact it makes on insomnia.

Because of the time zones involved, I found myself in the wee hours of a wet and cold night huddled in a radio studio at a quarter past three in the morning with Mpho Tutu in South Africa and the presenter of the program at the BBC studios in London. I was put in a small booth that felt like a confessional. The technician on the other side of the window was eating corn chips, an activity that, because of his work, he had learned to do in complete silence. It was an amazing talent, one whose secret he should share with the universe. It might not lead to world peace, but it might lead to peace on family car trips, a step in the right direction.

“You drew the short straw to get this time slot,” he said.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I would have turned up at any time to talk to Mpho.

It had been a long day. Benedict had struggled to get out of the car and face school. He’d been quiet on the drive there, but once we reached the gates where he was supposed to be dropped off, he fell apart. This was a regular occurrence at the time. He ran through all sorts of emotions, from tears to anger, and tried all sorts of threats, from promising to run away from home forever to promising to never leave home so that we’d have to look after him forever. I sat in the car beside him, wondering what would happen and how late I was going to be for work or if I was going to make it at all today. But I waited patiently with Benny, feeling like I was sitting on the edge of a precipice. Eventually, after half an hour, his mood swung and the storm had passed for today. He got out of the car and was soon embraced by the gates of school. It reminded me of that moment at the airport when you see someone go through the gates at customs and there’s nothing you can do but let them go to find their own way.

That night, I had expected to be talking with Mpho Tutu about what forgiveness might mean in a political context as she looked back on twenty years since South Africa gained a new constitution and Nelson Mandela became president. Instead, she got on the topic of family. That was where she had learned about forgiveness.

When it was my turn, I told a story about Benedict. He left his first school because of the merciless manner in which he had been bullied. It is painful even now to think about what he endured, and it would be better not to share the details because I’d rather celebrate my son than anything else. Benedict was crushed but, I believe, found a bedrock within himself of great strength. He made an extraordinary video in which he confronted his aggressors with the catalogue of what they had done. In a calm and detailed manner, he told his story and demanded that people listen, something that he had not been prepared to do earlier. The former school wanted a watered down version, but Benedict held his ground. He then had the courage to insist that this was played to the children concerned. He showed great generosity in giving those kids an opportunity to realize their need for forgiveness. He was creative in the way he relinquished some of the burden he himself was carrying.

“Wow,” interrupted Mpho Tutu from the other side of the world. “That is a wonderful story,” she continued after a pause. “I am so full of admiration for that young man.”

Later she commented that the road to forgiveness is all about finding strength and finding your voice, exactly as Benedict did. I went home at 3:15 AM, full of gratitude. I checked on the children before I turned in. Ever since he had made that video and shown it, Benedict was happy to sleep in his own bed. His thrashing in the night had come to an end. There was peace at the end of an honest road.