I'M SOOOOO STREEEESSSED......

Personally, I am so tired of hearing people whining about how stressed they are, and using it as an excuse to behave like brainless puppets....as if they have absolutely no control over their actions because they are "stressed out". As if "stress" is the dirtiest word in the human language.

Good Lord! Everyone is stressed. It's nothing new. We've been stressed since the moment of birth. I mean, think about it....how stressful is it to be jerked from a nice warm, dark, quiet bath, then squeezed headfirst down a short, narrow tube, through a small opening and tossed screaming and naked into a cold, noisy brightly lit room full of strangers with masks on? ARRRRRRGH!

Humans have been stressed since the dawn of mankind. How do you think it felt to have to chase down your dinner every day? (which, most likely, would have been 20 times bigger than you.) No grocery stores for these guys. Heck, they didn't even have fire to cook their food once they chased it down. And what did they use for utensils and plates...sticks and dirty rocks? Or did they just stick their heads into the carcass and start scarfing? Yummy! Then, they had to skin the darn thing for something to wear just to keep from freezing to death. (Where's a Target or a WalMart when you need it?)

Seriously, though, stress is a GOOD thing.

Think about that statement for a minute: stress is a good thing. And here's why:

Those same cavemen were under some MAJOR stress just trying to survive. Their life spans were probably around 18 years, if they were lucky. They got tired of living like that, so the stress made them look for ways to improve their lives.

Look down through the ages and you will see that stress is what has moved all of mankind towards the civilization we now have.

We became stressed because we wanted to travel faster than by foot across land, so we invented the wheel. Then we looked at the oceans and became fascinated and stressed over the idea that there must be something good on the other side of those oceans, so we built little boats...and bigger boats, and then ships. Then we decided that we wanted to cross and explore even greater distances on land so we stressed over how to better use the wheels we had, and came up with horse-drawn carriages, wagons and buggies. We built primitive roads. But, there were small bodies of water and ravines in our way so we built primitive bridges. We couldn't travel those roads fast enough, and more people wanted to travel greater distances all at once...so we built trains, and tracks for them to travel on, and we built cars and better roads for those cars so we could go even more places. And it was good. But, before long, we looked at those primitive bridges, and then at the larger lakes and rivers and at the distances between huge ravines and it stressed us. So we built bigger and better bridges and bigger and better cars and lo and behold..we could then go and explore yet more places, and get there faster...And it was good. Then, we became stressed because even those cars were not fast enough to get us where we wanted to go..and there's such a big world out there...places a car couldn't go, and a ship took forever....so we built airplanes. Yeeehah! We could cover amazing distances in such a short time! Then,they weren't fast enough, and that stressed us out, so we built bigger and faster airplanes...and then jets.

Then, the mother of all stresses: we'd conquered all earthly ways of travel and were bored, so we looked up to the Heavens at the universe and decided that it would be fun to go to the moon! We wanted to know what was out there.
And so, we found a way to do that. We actually walked on the darn moon! I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was amazing...but scary too...because, where do we go from here?

Well, in my opinion, it's all gone down hill from there.

We've conquered land, ocean and space. Now what? What do we do with all this stress and dissatisfaction in the world today?

Now, in our present world, stress is a dirty word! "Oh, I'm stressed...I better go to my doctor and get a pill. It's uncomfortable; I don't want to deal with it. I don't know what to do with these feelings of discontent and restlessness. I can't handle it. Yikes!

Now, we have the Internet, and all the lovely hi-tec gadgets that we depend upon to make our lives easier and more fun...and they do make our lives better in a lot of ways...otherwise, could I be talking to you right now? We have the benefits of all these things because someone got bored and restless and stressed at the status quo and wanted better.

However, it's a double-edged sword. Because of these things that have made our lives easier, we have become lazy. Our imagination has been put to sleep. We want to be entertained, rather than finding things to entertain ourselves. Our children are disinterested in playing outside; finding out about how the world works and wanting to make it better...they just want to sit on the couch and play video games, or sit in front of the computer "talking" to others that way because it's easier than actually getting out and engaging people on a face-to-face level. It used to be fun writing letters to friends who lived far away...actually sitting down with paper and pen and writing words down, and then sending the letters through the mail. It was exciting to get a letter, too. Now it's all done in a nanosecond by email. I like email, too....but, I miss the old fashioned snail mail.

I've heard it over and over from people of all ages and all walks of life: "I'm bored." "I'm stressed." blah blah blah.

So, here we sit. Stagnant. The world is in chaos, but, because we're "bored" or "stressed" we turn to a quick fix and become drug or alcohol addicted so that we don't have to think about anything. We sit in our homes, paralyzed, using every excuse in the book to avoid facing up to the the fact that we are a mess and are not contributing to society in any kind of way. We have become complaisant; content to let others do the work. We gripe if things don't suit us...but we aren't willing to get up off the couch, turn off our computers and TVs and get out there and change things.

We haven't a clue about how to raise our kids so we turn to programs like Super Nanny to show us how.

Our heroes are overpaid, spoiled, dishonest, tempermental athletes who are given a free ride at universities just so they can play on a team and win. They aren't required to learn anything while in college so long as they can keep on winning.

Our children's idols are ridiculously immoral, drug addicted messed-up little girl rock stars who prance around a stage, half-naked, while pretending to sing, and who then get massive attention when they finally flip out and wind up in a re-hab somewhere. Talk about reinforcing bad behavior.

Our politicians are allowed to run rampant over our lives because too many people are not interested in speaking out and doing the work necessary to stop them in their deceitful tracks! When good people say nothing, bad things happen!

The majority of our public schools are a complete and shameful disaster. Kids are getting shoved through even though they cannot legitimately pass these grades...because now, if these kids are not passed onto the next grade, the schools lose federal money, so the teachers are pressured to push them through. Because of money, some greedy, despicable politicians have decided to throw our kids to the wolves. These kids can't spell worth a darn. Their grammar is horrible. They can't add two and two without a calculator. They can't tell you anything about geography, or science or world events. They have no excitement or enthusiasm when it comes to learning...and it shows. We should all be ashamed that we've stood by and watched and accepted this.

Our children are bouncing off walls and are completely disconnected to their parents, to each other, and to the rest of society. They are angry, rootless, and scared. Nothing is required of them by the adults in their lives. Parents and other adults don't talk to them so they turn to each other, and the result is an astronomical number of them becoming pregnant too early and popping out yet another generation of babies who will wind up drifting aimlessly,and will also become a burden upon society because there's no one to teach them right from wrong, since their parents don't know right from wrong themselves. Our kids are crying and begging for discipline, crying for attention, and are committing murder upon their own families, and suicide in record numbers. When asked why they've killed their families, they say that they are "stressed"...as if that should excuse it all. On the rare occasions that they actually talk to someone and express a desire to commit suicide, and are asked why, they say that there's just "too much stress" in their lives and they "can't take it anymore." They haven't learned to channel that stress into positive action; they only see it as negative because that's all they've ever heard from every adult around them!

God forbid we should ever feel any discomfort and just deal with it. The evil demon Stress must be driven out at all cost! Our lives should just be always calm, peaceful, quiet.....

I don't know about you, but I find that boring.

I like calm, quiet peaceful moments in my life, too....but, then, I'm 64 years old and have been a hell-raiser most of my life; not afraid to shake things up and re-make my bed. It's time for ME to step aside a bit and let younger people forge new trails....

If only we can get them up off the couch!