Balancing Act, 21

The fact of the matter, Gentle Reader, is this: we live with a lot of stress. Here is fact number 2: almost all of it is self-inflicted. Still with me? I will wait a few seconds till you have calmed down and climbed down from the chandelier. Now please accept this little reality check, Darlings. Stress has always been a fact of our human existence, ever since our earliest hominid ancestors were dodging the fangs of sabre-tooth cats and the horrendous paws of cave bears. Down through our troubled and very tumultuous human history we have had problems, danger, risks, stress. We have survived ice ages, wars, starvation and famine, earthquakes, massive social upheavals, the atomic bomb. And now we are also going to survive this age of the internet, invasive robots and President Dump, the Great Deplorable squatting in the Oval Office. This is part of our humanity. We are survivors and we are damn good at it. Even now during this era of politically correct hypersensitivity and suddenly we are all delicate little snowflakes and fragile flowers or outraged and insulted victims, even those of us who flourish in our threatened White Privilege. Absurdity upon absurdity. We are also going to get through all that, and maybe some of us are even going to get over our outrage and victimhood and our ingrained kneejerk impulse to justify our privilege, kiss and make up and hugs all around a we go striding off to the sunset together, hand in hand, arm in arm, singing Kumbaya in forty-part harmony. We are going to get through this odious nonsense, even if it means we will simply find and invent afterwards new and improved ways of hating each other. What do most of us think of when we think of the word stress? Likely it has something to do with the creeping and every resurgent anxiety that we are never going to get anything done adequately or on time, and that we are not going to harvest as many likes on social media as we are accustomed to. there is also the stress that comes from not knowing if we will make ends meet, if we will have to sell our home (those who are privileged enough to own) and downgrade to a cheaper condo, or (gasp and horrors!) turn into renters! I herd recently in the news that a growing number of well-incomed Canadians are unable to balance their books, are living with alarming levels of debt and are having to make all kinds of sacrifices in order to stay afloat. What kind of sacrifices? Maybe fewer visits to the nail spa?> No more gourmet treats for Fluffy or Baily or whatever they want to call their furred and four-legged dependent. It might mean having to sell one of your cars. Or maybe both of them and then number yourselves among the great unwashed, people like me, who have unashamedly been accessing the public transit system all our lives. It could mean few dinners out, fewer concerts, sports events. It could mean any number of small sacrifices. But my guess is that the vast majority of those people have already dug their own grave. Instead of opting to live more simply, within their means, instead of accepting a humbler way of life that is more humanly focussed and less contingent upon social status, they have opted for the Great Lie of western consumer capitalism, and oh how they cry and whine upon finding out just how unmerciful and cruel a goddess she really is! I also have my own areas of stress, almost all self-inflicted, though I have to admit that the low pay and less than adequate pay raise from my bosses is also a contributing factor. However, I still earn less than a living wage, unlike many, and I have long been accustomed to living comfortably within my means and without the daily luxuries that those poor little Brahmans have come to regard as essentials. For me, I would just like to be earning a little bit more so that I can do my grocery shopping within my own neighbourhood and get my prescription refilled at the Shoppers Drug Mart down the street, but those are expensive and for me untenable options, so I have to plan these things around traveling into other parts of town where I can access more affordable shopping options and still work everything in with my work schedule. And this causes stress. And I already live a lot more simply than most people. So, yes, Gentle Reader, we can reduce our stress if we are willing to lower our standards and live on a more human scale. It isn't impossible. And the next time I catch any of you whining about stress, I will be the first one to remind you that we no longer live in an era when a beautiful young queen would get her head chopped off simply for not giving birth to a child of her loathsome husband's preferred gender!