Are our lives any more stressful today than they have been throughout the ages?
Are our lives any more stressful today than they have been throughout the ages?
Too often we hear someone say that things used to be better in the “old” days, less stressful, more sparing of the individual and less dangerous on all levels. Depending on how far back one goes, those stresses were just as threatening to life, limb and happiness as our modern-day stresses.
Is being chased by a lion or wolf worse than being hijacked or mugged? Is not collecting enough food for a meal any worse than not being able to earn enough money to pay for that food?
Everyone perceives stress in a different way and the effects of it are as different as the stresses out there. Stress as a whole has been with us since the beginning of our species. Adaptation to events and circumstances arguably created the beings we are today and stress is a necessary stimulus for growth and development.
So why do we whinge about it so constantly, when we should rather meet it as a challenge and an opportunity?
Perhaps the worst loss to us as 'civilised' human beings is the loss of our ability to relax in a spontaneous, natural and guilt-free manner. Indeed, we often need to take classes in things like relaxation and meditation and learn only later on in life that it should be a normal and natural part of our cycle of achievement and recuperation.
Often this knowledge comes at the expense of our families, relationships and our health, and we gain it by virtue of pain and loss, instead of having it as a basic part of understanding how life should be lived.
Stress is the complementary aspect of relaxation, and we suffer from the one only by virtue of having too high a level of the other.
If we have enough relaxation, we can cope with the stress. Perhaps we need also to have enough stress to cope with the periods of relaxation – and we always need to remember that stress is the stimulus for growth and change, and appreciate it for what it does for us.
*Email comments or queries to Dr Marianne Baasch (Grahamstown homoeopath) marbaa2404@hotmail.com
