Weird night in Europe recently, according to the New York Times:

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

Juxtaposed against that black comedy in the paper's Most Emailed list was the story of another kind of invasion: the nightly encroachment of the "family bed babies" into mommy and daddy's sheets and blankets. For some reason, the article relates, the 1990s were the dawn of the co-sleeping era, when exhausted parents bought a few hours of sleep by sharing their beds, their warmth, and their heartbeats with their babies. The price - no more sex for the parents - was deemed a steep but fair deal.

Now, we're told, as those co-sleeping kids grow into large, gangly collections of limbs, they still insist upon invading their parents' beds nightly. And parental defenses appear inadequate: buying fancy Harry Potter-inspired 4-posters and Cinderella beds may delight the kids while the sun's up, but at night the family bed is the only hot spot in town.

Pallets on the floor - no straw here, but expensive trundle beds, blow up mattresses, foldable futons, and luxurious down sleeping pillows - that started as ways for the kids to get closer to their parents without actually mimicking a can of sardines are now the second-to-last refuge of the parents themselves. Many moms and dads, of course, end up finding board in the almost-abandoned Harry Potter and Cinderella beds that were to have solved the problem.

And in a recent article, Tracie Rozhon reports on a new trend: his and hers bedrooms, sleeping nooks, or wings. A National Association of Home Builders survey predicts that 60% of custom built homes in 2015 will have two master bedrooms. Why?

In interviews, couples and sociologists say that often it has nothing to do with sex. More likely, it has to do with snoring. Or with children crying. Or with getting up and heading for the gym at 5:30 in the morning. Or with sending e-mail messages until well after midnight.

Unlike the stalwart residents of Liechtenstein, American parents are fleeing the invasion of the sleep-snatchers.

I asked my wife what she thought was going on. Why is modern culture so hard on sleep?

"Huh?" she asked groggily.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"It's 2 in the morning, what did you think?"

"Oops, sorry."

When she was able to think coherently about the topic, she reminded me of three things:

1. For most of human history, the parents, the kids, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles all slept together. For warmth. For protection, For reassurance. Privacy and alone time were just not big on anyone's list most of the time.
2. In traditional cultures, people didn't routinely sleep through the night. At any nomadic fire, at least a few people were always up. They talked, they told stories, they tended the fire, they star-gazed, they ate, they had cosmic visions. When they were ready to sleep, they lay down. No big deal.
3. Most societies figured out a rhythm of eating, moving and resting that worked: Wake with the sun, light breakfast (or no breakfast), do the work for 5-6 hours, big meal after noon following by 3 hours of down  time, a final push of activity, light supper, and bed when the sun went down. This worked biologically and socially, and is still the norm in cultures where they pay more attention to their bodies and the natural world than the FOREX exchange and the Blackberry.

We're paying the price for our alienation from natural rhythms. Most of us can't begin to function without drugging ourselves into a caffeinated buzz in the morning. We need sugar and caffeine breaks regularly during the work day. We fall asleep reading to our kids, who elbow us when we start drooling or verbally inserting our hallucinations into Goodnight Moon and Charlotte's Web. We lack focus and drive. We operate on half our cylinders. We curse the start of Daylight Savings Time because we get robbed of a precious 3600 seconds.

So what are we to do, stuck in a society that is more conflicted about sleep than it is even about sex? Sleep is for the weak, but sleep is the new sex. We learn to brag in college about pulling all-nighters, and we also long for one more hour, one more minute, one more slap of the snooze button.

How can we learn to beat the odds when it comes to a chronically fatigued society? Here are my recommendations for a first line of defense against the exhaustion invasion:

Learn to Meditate: for most of us, the exhausting part of our lives is the part between our ears. Twenty minutes a day can train us to waste less brain juice on worrying, judging, fearing, controlling, and berating. When you learn how to meditate, you need less sleep.

Exercise Hard: try to go to bed as physically exhausted as you are mentally fatigued. Even 10 minutes of hard exertion will help balance the racing mind with a racing body, so they can both gear down in tandem.

Stop Taking Wakeup Drugs: find out how energy bankrupt you are, stop borrowing boosts from a cookie or a mug. The interest rate is sleep, and the coffee break  loan sharks are merciless. Make it a priority to find a week when you can withdraw from caffeine and deal with your true state of exhaustion. Don't make Lloyd Bridges mistake in Airplane: "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines." Take charge of your health before it gives you no choice.

Relax: Take mini-breaks throughout the day. Get a watch that beeps on the hour and train yourself to take three slow, long, deep, smooth and even breaths - in and out - once every sixty minutes. In fact, do it right now. Close your eyes, relax your shoulders, loosen your hands, drop your jaw, bring the tongue to the front of the roof of your mouth, and take three deep breaths. Feel what you've been missing, and what's always just one breath away. Nourish yourself. Smile. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Get Less Busy: Easier said than done, but find one activity that costs more than its worth in terms of the time you spend and the results you get. Invest that time into gearing down. Look around for things to be thankful for. Have a good cry. Take a ten-minute nap in your kid's four-poster bed. You know you want to.

Reprogram Your Mind: pay attention to your thinking about sleep and rest, activity and inactivity. Catch yourself and challenge the societal assumptions we've been programmed with: more is better, sleep is for the weak, I should be doing something productive at all times, etc.