desk; of admiring brightly colored laundry hung to dry in the streets; of inhaling the sweet air of Spring during a walk in the park. Sleeping rituals are particularly conducive to the pleasures of everyday aesthetics. They happen literally every day, and, more importantly, they slow us down just enough to see familiar things in a new light. We realize that there is beauty and pleasure hidden in ordinary activities. To see how sleeping rituals bring about these primal pleasures, consider the basic act of changing into pajamas or night gowns: we take off clothes that are by that point sweaty, sometimes smelly or soiled, reminiscent of the day’s labor and stress, and we slip into garments that are soft, made to offer comfort, usually with fewer zippers, buttons, or hard seams. This is a form of haptic pleasure, a pleasure our skin enjoys. Then, we turn down lights, perhaps turning on a lampshade on the bedstand, whose gentler luminosity mirrors the sunset, and go brush our teeth and face.
reading books to their children or bathing their babies, at bedtime more so than during the day. Even if one is tired in the evening, bedtime rituals can give us a chance to connect with a family member, and talk about how one’s day has been. And it’s not just bedtime routines that we share with others: sleeping itself can be communal, and a source of interpersonal value. In many parts of the world, it’s customary for parents to sleep with their children; many siblings sleep in the same room or even in the same bed; spouses usually sleep together. My kids are 10 and 13 years old, and they still like to do sleepovers in each other’s room. No matter how much they bicker and squabble during the daytime, once they settle down and nestle in a chaos of duvets, blankets and pillows and assorted other unidentified objects that I keep stumbling on, they calm down, and start chattering and whispering and reading journal entries and sharing secrets. It’s the most adorable thing, even when they have to be told to shush and go to sleep.
Dirt is once again washed off our bodies, and substituted with the fresh taste of mint, or other herbs or roots, or perhaps fruity flavors, if one is a child. We might smell the fragrance of soap, moisturizer, or other such products. These multisensorial pleasures might be even increased if our bedtime routine includes a long shower or a bubble bath or a longer skincare routine. Other blissful rituals may include gliding into a tightly-tucked bed, or inhaling the scent of freshly-laundered linen, or reading a book, praying or meditating in a calm, quiet environment. All of these activities need not be solitary. Several of them are apt for sharing, and may constitute moments of intimacy with loved ones. For instance, many parents cherish
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