Things that made us smile: An eight-hour-long lullaby that gave me refuge

It was during the height of the pandemic in 2021 when I first started to struggle with sleep. I would lie awake for hours before leaving my bed at the break of dawn to go for a walk. It had become a routine. After months of agony, I called our family physician. But he was reluctant to give me a prescription for sleeping pills. Instead, he asked me to make some lifestyle changes. No screen time at least for three hours before going to bed, chamomile tea, meditation, white noise.

I tried it all. My insomnia did not go away, but I did learn how to cope with it. What helped me the most were the chamomile tea and white noise. Every night, after dinner I would have a cup of tea and then listen to the softest white noise I could find on YouTube for about an hour before stumbling into bed. I was getting some sleep, but the exhaustion from months of restless nights was yet to go away.

Then, sometime in August, tucked away in bed, while looking for some white noise I had not tried yet, I came across an eight-hour-long composition called Sleep. It was nothing like I had heard before. I fell asleep with my earbuds still playing the nocturne.

The next day, when I woke up, the music had stopped. My earbuds were still in place but had run out of battery. I wasn’t exhausted anymore. After a long time, it wasn’t a groggy morning.

British composer Max Richter describes his eight-hour-long symphony as a “place to rest”. Sleep did give me a place to rest. But home is where we feel the most comfortable resting, is it not? I thought to myself. And I was home. Then why could it not comfort me?

It took me some time to figure out the puzzle. During the lockdown, even though I was home, it was hardly familiar. The world was hardly familiar. The world as I knew it had changed. Covid statistics were being published along with the weather forecast.

Richter’s lullaby gave me some sense of familiarity of the world I had left behind. It brought me relief and prepared me to embrace the brave new world that lay before me.