An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by David Lazarus reports that, according to the National Institutes of Health, more than 70 million Americans are affected by “sleep troubles.”

Variety of causes, blah blah blah, use of sleeping pills doubling — well, I could have predicted that.

Here’s my curmudgeonly opinion. Either sleep is a priority, or it isn’t. And obviously it’s not much of a priority for contemporary Americans. (I don’t mean parents with kids under three. You’re hereby exempt from my scolding. Please stop reading this now and go grab a nap.) So of course people have problems with it.

IMO, people tend to think of sleep as a negative space — as an emptiness between what we “really” do and who we really are. Dreams are dismissed as “unreal” or inconsequential. I.e. a waste of time.

Fine. But if that’s as important as it is, no wonder we find it increasingly elusive . . .