The road was icy in places. The clouds gathered, dark and menacing. The winds whipped past the SUV making its way down the highway.
The clouds offered what’s called a “wintry mix” and the schoolteacher steering the car struggled to stay awake.
This experience isn’t unusual for the residents of West Texas. Living remotely, and driving frequently to bigger cities like Odessa, Midland, or El Paso for one reason or another, they regularly fight the battle to stay awake.
Accident investigators said she nodded off, went off-road, and flipped her vehicle. It happens a couple of times a year in that sparsely populated part of Texas.
Weak opponents
Weak opponents aren’t respected. You and others assume you’ll win. You don’t need to train. You barely need to try. Victory is a given.
You’ve got competing priorities, and other things to attend to.
It’s safe to pretty much ignore a weak opponent, you assume.
If you’re heavily motivated by others’ opinions, you’ll note how beating a weak opponent doesn’t impress anyone and doesn’t build cred with others.
Yet, weak or not, an opponent is an opponent. Any opponent is capable of winning. If they’re completely incapable of winning, they’re not really an opponent. For example, if you face a T-ball team off with a professional baseball team, there’s no way that the T-ballers will win. The T-ball team isn’t an opponent.
Tiredness is a weak opponent.
If you rest enough, if you sleep, tiredness can be defeated but your victory, or loss, isn’t a given.
When you don’t give it, its due, tiredness will find a way to exploit an opening. Tiredness, like a small-school Division I college football program against a larger rival, will occasionally score an upset. Coffee, or another stimulant, won’t be able to make up for the sleep.
Driving on a long, straight road is also seen as a weak opponent.
A single cause of failure
A weak opponent scores an upset sometimes.
The biggest football programs have the most resources. They belong to the biggest football conferences. They have the most fans. They get most of the attention. Their dominance is highlighted by rankings.
Once in a while, they’re stunned by a smaller program.
Sports pundits will attribute these upsets to strategy, a pivotal player or play, or luck.
Is it? Or is it hubris?
If it’s hubris, it’s hard to prove. When Northern Illinois upset Notre Dame in 2024, the coaching staff probably would have admitted that their defeat was a possibility. Yet there’s got to be some level of overconfidence culpable in the loss.
At the end of the year, the Fighting Irish finished 13-1, winning against every other team except for the Huskies in Week 2.
A record of 13-1 means you’ve had a great season, that you’ve got great coaches, great players. When you lose against a team that never wins against ranked opponents, something went wrong.
Cause behind a cause
When a deadly car accident happens in a more populated area, people blame the traffic, some kind of unexpected change in the driving conditions.
A lack of sleep is the cause behind the cause.
It doesn’t smack you in the face so obviously as it does in West Texas.
West Texas drivers are like drivers everywhere in the United States, except that their driving conditions are the easiest anywhere. The roads are generally good. They’re long and straight. The weather, for the most part, is good. Sure it can get windy and icy sometimes but it’s still a lot better than in some other places.
Some would say that the roads there are boring to drive. I’d answer that much of that part of the country has beautiful landscapes, especially once you leave Interstate 10.
Come on! Like being tailgated at 85 mph further west on I-10 near Phoenix is wonderful?
Driving through West Texas, you can stay engaged if you sleep enough. You can listen to music, talk to a passenger, talk on the phone, or listen to a recorded book or podcast. Saying that you were bored or that you get bored makes you sound stupid. Really. What’s the matter with you? The problem isn’t with Texas or how flat it is or isn’t. The problem is with you.
The trouble may be that tiredness is, fundamentally, a weak opponent. You’ve got everything to lose by losing to him, no cred, no impressive story to gain by beating him. That might be frightening to some.
If you give a weak opponent his due, however, you take the victory, have a good tune-up, and drive on. Taking the weak opponent seriously gives you the power and ability to take on more powerful opponents. It sets you up for success.
Also on the blog:
James Cobb RN, MSN is the founder of the Dream Recovery System, a top sleep blog.
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