The Best Place Is Bed

It’s true.

Tulum. The rolling hills of Ireland. Grand Canyon National Park. A restaurant. There are many lovely places all over the world, but none is as lovely as the soft place you keep next to your other things: bed.

Imagine it now, if you’re not there already.

Soft, warm, and safe. Not going anywhere.

It’s easy to conflate the virtues of bed with the virtues of sleep. This is a mistake. While sleep is good, bed is also good. Not the same good, but a by-itself good. A good just by itself. Bed good. Bed good just being bed. A place to put yourself that feels good. Lie down and it holds your whole body in a soft way.

No effort necessary.

But you can’t forget about sleep. Sleep. You need it, it calms your mind, it makes you feel better, you do it in bed. Everything else is gone; it’s just sleep now. In the morning, you don’t want to wake up. It’s worth noting that the sole unattractive aspect of bed is the fact that at some point you have to leave, and you can’t say that about another place.

You see my point about bed.

Not only can you sleep there, you can work there. You can have your laptop in bed and chat to your friend, “I’m in bed, are you?” I’m not judging you. You can do private things there, if you’d like. You can read. If you’re lucky, you can lie there and close your eyes and a person will talk to you with no expectation of a response on your part. You can listen to a podcast for a similar effect. When it’s too cold, you can get into your bed. You can wear a sweatshirt under the covers and now you’re much warmer.

It’s very nice.

And the covers. Soft, warm, and, if you’ve set it up this way, the duvet cover is light pink linen and it makes you happy to see. Clouds on top of you. Thick blankets, you feel safe under their weight. And the sheets. The first night with clean sheets, think of it now. A fact some of us will never forget is that Oprah employs people who put new sheets on her bed every day. Unattainable for most. But the rest of us can be Oprah once a week or twice a month, whatever our schedule is. And aren’t we lucky for that.

Mhm.

Is there an object more decadent than a pillow? For some, pillows remind us of a story in the book Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul called “The Pillow,” which was sad enough and attached-to-an-everyday-(for-some)-object enough to stay in our heads for almost twenty years now. Are the stories in that series of books real? Where do they come from. No matter. Pillows. Aren’t we lucky to have a pillow, the purpose of which is only to be very soft under our heavy heads. And the word: pillow. Pillow. If there is a softer word, I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing it. Pillow.

Bed.

Yes, it’s true. The best place is your bed.

Isn’t that great?