To sleep perchance to dream

Subject: To sleep perchance to dream.

Being asleep or being awake are both part of the process of being alive. We value being awake because we are in charge of ourselves, our actions are recorded in our memory, the plans we make are dependent on being awake. But what if, as we get older it becomes, much of a muchness, that without a plan or even with a plan the effectiveness of the body to carry out the plan is so much diminished.
You see in the old age home people sitting and sleeping throughout the day, some of it is drug induced but much is the natural contentment of having done as much as you were capable of and  now you sit and contemplate. 
Sleeping is an adjunct of contemplation it's a recognition that in your shrunken world of hind-sited memory the future is for others and a good sleep is but the cherry on the top.
The urge to be up doing things is a Protestant ethic inculcated with the thought of "busy hands keeping the mind from straying to evil thoughts". The search for a tidy home and a tidy life was thought to be the epitome of good practice amongst the middle and working class, only people with time on their hands were allowed the 'sacrifice' of doing what they wanted, which included, doing nothing. 
Retirement in many ways brings everyone onto that same plateau. It is only the habits of a lifetime of work and routine which inhibits us to nestle into the  sloth of old age with quiet alacrity