Should you really sleep tight when you say goodnight?
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote in 1947,
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
If not via the poet, the intense space odyssey of Interstellar may have communicated these beautiful lines to you.
In any case, it would seem obvious that the ‘noit ‘noit in referral here is death, drawn up by the imagery of dying light,very classic.
A fair share of literature experts agree on the theme of the poem.
The poet’s message over the course of the text refers to all kinds of old men, their lives and then twilight years full of retrospect.
Lastly the poet wishes his own father’s old age to burn and rave rather than slip away slowly.
Though some take it as the acceptance of the ultimate darkness for all men,
some take it as a message to not give in to death ,
the perspective of fighting is what appealed to me.
Not in a manner of “the ultimate switch off” but rather like a daily confrontation.
Instead of seeing it as a conflict involving other people or hostile situations it could be thought of as a mere call to action .
A call to our conscience, right before the head hits the pillow — Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rest should be earned ,
only then can it be laced with silver satisfaction.
A person in bed falls asleep just out of the body’s habit to do so but the uneasy mind keeps him up for hours.
Raging against the dying of the light needn’t be the Light of our lives,
rather the comfortable lamp we feel necessary to switch off, to induce that habit of sleeping.
An exhausted body and a worked up mind do not look for sleep, sleep pursues them. Irrespective of a bed, it hits before the pillow and can in true sense be called “falling asleep”.
In a nutshell to keep going at something and not willingly resting our oars can really do wonders,
not for the job at hand, those come and go
but for the hands at the job, for they matter more.
