Waking: Know Your Coping Mechanisms

In a 1995 edition of “The Orange County Register,” a professor at McMasters University in Ontario described famed physicist Albert Einstein’s approach to solving an apocalyptic hypothetical: “When Einstein was asked how he would save the world in one hour, he said he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it….”

It was an apocryphal quote, one which Einstein likely didn’t speak. But still, isn’t there wisdom buried there? When we come to understand our habits, vic...