BEFORE STRESS RULED OUR LIVES

Once upon a time, in what might seem like Ancient History to non Boomers, people somehow managed to live without concentrating upon reducing their stress. They didn’t add to it either because their/our days were not thought of as a 24/7 continuum.

The stress industry had not exploded around us to make us aware that we were tense and upset and wound up from (among other things) a work day that never ended. Our jobs ended for the day and we went home.

When we went home, ‘after work’ we went home to the other part of our lives, the part that mattered most to us, our homes and families. Rarely would the work part of our life intrude upon the home part of our lives. We and everyone else around us lived like this, so none of the above was unusual.

I remember I was working for a stock broker when the ‘Big Bang’ was about to happen. We were told that business would be running on a 24 hour day and be worldwide in scope. Similarly we heard a lot about a ‘paperless world’ which was and is, coming soon.

To prepare for this ‘new’ world, corporations were going to become leaner, meaner and more efficient. This usually meant that soon fewer people would be doing the work than ever before.

A lot of industries merged, many kinds of companies joined together with many other (previous incompatible) industries. For example risk averse long term thinking banks merged with short term thinking stock brokers. Generally everyone wanted a piece of everyone else’s business.

A lot of these strange multi-industry conglomerations didn’t work out for obvious reasons and such strange bedfellows, as food processing and clothing manufacturing and car parts, often eventually separated back into more logical associations with more those producing or dealing with areas with similar products and services.

What was this time before an industry was devoted to stress and even children suddenly requiring medication to function (Ritalin etc.)? How ever did we manage to stay sane, without others telling us how to fix our lives?

I’d say it actually goes back to a mutual understanding that everyone had that there was a time for all things in life and that we were not trying to merge everything together in one big mixture that came at us nonstop.

When you don’t need two incomes to just keep a roof over your head and constant activity for yourself and your children. Today 60% of all American women work and over 70% of mothers are working. Meanwhile, often many must have other people raising their children.

Ferrying your charges from activity to activity after work extends the day into evening until eventually everyone collapses exhausted into bed.

It was probably in 1980 that Esquire magazine ran an article on how to be poor on $100,000 a year. When all of the obligations and clubs and costs and memberships were calculated, very little was left. Now similar calculations are done for millions of dollars. The amounts are higher and, even allowing for inflation, harder for many more people to ever think of being debt free. Besides there is always someone above us we would like to reach. Perhaps if we could just do that, we would finally be happy.

I think we were happier. We certainly had fewer people telling us what we wanted or needed in life. That may be why.

Some of us believe that space and time may be today’s ultimate luxuries. They are not, however, for sale. With a little effort, however, we might change our own lives for the better by consciously making room in our lives to enjoy the world around us and to take back some of our time for ourselves to enjoy and marvel at what life must have been like before stress ruled our lives.