What is the reason behind the need to “fall” asleep rather than choosing to be asleep?
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I’ll take me stab at it, I’m no scientist or anything so keep that in mind.
Sleep is less of an action (like picking up a cup and setting it back down) and more like a full length process. You may have heard of “stages” of sleep, such as R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement) all of these stages play an important role in the overall goals and effects of sleep on the body. Even while asleep, our brains are still active! Electrical signals fire, things happen with memory, the body heals and grows, etc.
Our brain can’t gain the benefits of sleep instantly, and the best that our evolution has so far produced is this very slow lengthy process of the brain going through these many stages of sleep, back and forth, before it and the body have achieved “rest”
To choose to do something would also probably mean that we would have to be awake to do it. Part of being asleep is your active, thinking mind is turned off for the most part, so that those cycles of sleep can occur the way they need to. It takes time for brains to do this though, which is why we don’t have to worry about accidentally falling asleep if we were to blink too long.
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