Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep

The words “Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to bed. This was the best time of day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they should go,” were written by Sylvia Plath, a poet whose soul was both delicate and fierce, whose vision pierced the veil between waking and dreaming. In these tender lines, she speaks not merely of childhood and rest, but of the sacred realm of imagination, of the secret world that lives within each of us when the noise of day has faded. It is in that soft hour of twilight, when mind drifts from thought to dream, that we meet the purest form of ourselves—the dreamer who shapes the unseen.

Plath’s words capture the innocence of creation, that moment when the child, unburdened by the world, becomes both author and god of her own universe. As the day closes and silence gathers, the imagination begins to stir—not to flee from reality, but to reorder it, to “make up dreams inside the head the way they should go.” Here lies the essence of all art, all invention: the desire to reshape the imperfect world into harmony. The dream becomes a rehearsal for beauty, a silent revolution against the dull tyranny of the ordinary.

In these lines, too, there glows the deep bond between mother and child, between guidance and freedom. The mother, believing in the power of rest, unknowingly gave her daughter a gift greater than sleep—the space for dreaming. For in those hours of quiet lying, Sylvia was not merely drifting; she was building. Her mind, untroubled by fatigue, became a garden of visions. The poet who would one day write with searing truth first learned, as a child, to dwell in the tender space between waking and sleep, where thought and emotion intertwine like roots and stars.

Throughout history, the twilight hour has been sacred to those who seek wisdom. The philosopher Socrates walked at dusk, pondering the mysteries of virtue; the inventor Nikola Tesla claimed that his finest ideas came when his body was still, and his mind danced freely in imagination. They, like Plath, understood that creativity is born not in strain, but in stillness. When the noise of ambition fades, the soul begins to whisper, and from those whispers come visions that shape the destiny of humankind.

But Plath’s reflection carries also a trace of melancholy, a sense that the dream-world was more orderly, more “how things should go,” than the waking world ever could be. This is the eternal sorrow of the dreamer: to live in two realms, one of imagination, the other of imperfection. Yet it is not a curse, but a calling. The dreamer’s task is to bring something of that inner perfection into the waking world—to make art, to speak truth, to weave beauty into the fabric of the everyday. Thus, what begins as childish musing becomes a lifelong mission: to bridge the gap between what is and what could be.

To those who live in this age of noise and haste, her words are a quiet command: make time to dream. Do not drown your inner world in endless light; let yourself rest in the twilight, where ideas drift like stars waiting to be gathered. In that stillness, imagination is reborn. Close your eyes not only to sleep, but to awaken the dreamer within, for the visions that come in calm moments are often the blueprints of your destiny.

Remember this, then, seekers of truth: the twilight of the mind is not idleness, but the beginning of creation. Guard it as sacred. When night falls, do not rush into sleep like one fleeing darkness; enter it like one stepping into a temple. There, in the silent communion between thought and dream, you will find your truest self—the one who sees not just the world as it is, but as it should be.

Thus spoke Sylvia Plath, not only of her childhood, but of the secret power that lives in all who dare to imagine. To dream is not to escape life—it is to shape it. So, when next you lie beneath the quiet of night, let your heart wander, let your thoughts drift, and whisper to yourself, as she once did: this is the best time of day.