Modern Day Stress

If it’s the phone ringing as it normally does, your body reacts only enough to answer whatever is required, talking to your sister in Quebec City or saying yes, you’d love to do a market survey. Right! However, if the phone rings in the middle of the night, you may well have a more stressed ‘uptight’ reaction. The ringing wakes you out of a deep sleep - you’re immediate response is alarm - as you think “oh no, it must be bad news.” Your bodily reactions calm down - once you realize it’s your favourite aunt Louise calling from Australia, where she’s on vacation and has forgotten the time difference.

Everywhere you turn today, in the media, at work, at home, we hear about stress. It is a major topic of discussion as we speed through our hectic days. We charge about with more and more gadgets making life supposedly simpler, when in fact - everyone seems to have far too many tasks they want to accomplish. And, not enough time to finish them all. We have appointment books and to-do lists and little sticky papers decorating our refrigerators. Everyone seems in a dash. We schedule family time, couple time, work-time, formal vacation time, social time, time to do household chores and meal preparation, and so on.

All too seldom will we schedule personal time to relax or find peace. We rarely schedule time to unwind our busy selves. That need always seems to come last! We know we should pace ourselves better. Logically we know we are doing too much too fast- but we think we can’t change that, at least not yet. Soon though. Ha, ha. We are on a gerbil wheel, spinning on and on . . .yet while we do, our bodies are silently - or not so silently, taking the toll.

Return to menu