Britney Spears, Chinstrap Penguins, and Nap Culture

Remember the early 2000s? It was a decidedly tough time in American popular culture.

Star Wars had just ruined a classic trilogy by introducing the world to Jar Jar Binks.

Baggy cargo shorts and low-rise bootcut jeans dominated fashion.

Starbucks added drive-throughs, turning a caffeinated community gathering space into a commoditized traffic jam.

Al Gore tried to put social security in a lockbox. Losing the presidential election, at least he was freed up to invent the internet.

For adolescent girls and boys, heroes were hard to come by. Our emerging women were invited to choose between Britney and Christina. You could be an over-sexed genie-in-a-bottle or an oversexed school girl singing “hit me baby one more time.”

Not great, folks.

The young men of the world fared no better and were offered the choices of steroid-laced baseball players or aggressive rap-rock singers with chinstrap beards who “did it all for the nookie.”

Ugh. We should give the millennials some extra grace for dealing with all of that.

Now, dear reader, you might be asking where this is all going.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I led you into a bit of a cultural cul-de-sac. As in - this whole opening is really an out-of-order digression.

You see, I read an article some time back about chinstrap penguins and that sent me on a thought-spiral that ended up with Fred Durst’s cargo shorts next to Christina Aguilera’s flare-legged low-rise pants on my iPad screen. I figured if I had to take the not-so-pleasant stroll down memory lane, I’d drag you along with me in commiseration.

So…sorry about that. I actually intended to double-click on that article I mentioned dealing with chinstrap penguins. It isn’t every day you read something about the animal kingdom that sort of melts your brain. Usually it’s about shark eyeballs or chimpanzee intelligence. Well, what if told you that scientists have learned that chinstrap penguins survive on a sleep regiment that consists of 10,000 four-second micronaps a day.

You read that right: TEN THOUSAND NAPS A DAY. This is next level stuff.

(How many hours of sleep is that? I’m glad you asked. I was also curious and my back of the napkin math tells me it’s about 11 hours of sleep a day. Four seconds at a time.)

I find naps fascinating. To be honest, I feel like I’m something of a nap expert. Not because I take naps. I wish I was better at napping, but I’m actually a pretty terrible day-sleeper. I am, however, an expert nap observer - because I am a preacher.

Over the years, I have had a bird’s eye view of all kinds of people taking micronaps during sermons. Kids passing out. Old people nodding off. Middle-aged parents snoozing openly.

I’m not mad about it. It’s actually pretty amusing.

Maybe they didn’t like the topic. Maybe they had a late night. Maybe it was just perfectly warm in their seat and they couldn’t care less about some Hebrew term in the middle of Deuteronomy and that muffin they had on the way to church was working its grog-inducing carb-magic.

It doesn’t matter why people are napping during my sermon. Just know that I’m not judging. I am, however, definitely noticing. Even among the hundreds of faces staring back at me, the indications of someone about to doze off are clear. You know them. They’re the same for someone in church as they are for grandpa watching golf on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. Eyelids droop. Maybe the mouth starts hanging open just a bit. Blinks start slowing down. And then, the telltale sign: a nearly imperceptible head nod. You know it. I know it. It’s the last gasp of consciousness.

Everyone has been there. Even Mr. Bean.

Napping is glorious. And napping is nothing new. A few of the disciples famously napped in Gethsemane. Leonardo da Vinci was said to have slept 20-minute increments instead of straight through the night. Cosmo Kramer tried this plan and woke up in a river in a sack.

But while chinstrap penguins take micronaps, humans, it seems, fall into one of two different napping camps.

First, we have the power nappers. Those of you in this group can pass out for 20-30 minutes and then wake up firing on all cylinders. You sprint through sleep and somehow gain all of the benefits of a full night’s rest.

Others of you are marathon nappers. You can seemingly nap interminably. Still, no matter how long that nap goes, you are going to wake up groggy and vaguely angry at the world. Your body seems to resent being teased with a full night’s sleep only to be rudely awakened after 90 minutes.

Somewhat recently, I ran across what some experts are calling “The Perfect Nap,” a concept called a “nappuccino.” This idea basically consists of drinking caffeine right before a power nap. You not only wake up refreshed after the restorative sleep, but you get the added benefit of caffeine kicking in as you wake up. Sounds fun.

All of the science points to naps being a great thing for humanity. Naps improve mood, reaction time, focus, memory retention, and concentration.

Whether you’re working as an attorney or an asphalt spreader, does anyone really think that a groggy, half-brained zombie is a better employee than a fully recharged one?

Somehow, though, naps are socially discouraged, assigned the sin of sloth in our results-oriented work culture.

I once had a boss who napped at his desk. I was amazed. And jealous. And the other employees in the department talked about “turning him in.” In our culture, he wasn’t optimizing his afternoon performance. He was lazy, they’d say. Rubbish - I was working for a modern Da Vinci!

As a marathon napper myself, I don’t think you’ll find me asleep at my desk any time soon. The last thing the church needs is a pastor drooling on his desk for 3 hours a day. If I’m asleep during the day, I’m probably sick.

Even then, I’d like to be the first to suggest more naps for humans. I should learn how to power nap. You should embrace napping. In fact, I am hereby a proponent of all kinds of naps. Power naps, micro naps, marathon naps, even sermon naps.

Let’s go even further. Napping should be taught in school. Our children are falling asleep as a teacher futilely attempts to make Shakespeare relevant to tweens and teens. We might as well embrace it. Teach them how to nap. Extol the virtues of the power nap. Hang photos of chinstrap penguins in the hallways. Forget cursive. Forget whatever has replaced the typing class that was forced on me. Geometry? History? Foreign language? Oh, please. Teach them the language of day-sleeping, the history of society’s greatest snoozers, and a Pythagorean theorem of a new generation: Day² + Sleep² = Happiness².

To paraphrase the late, great Whitney Houston: I believe the children are the future. Give them naps and let them lead the way.

Sleep on, friends.

- KB