The Stress of Life - contd...

We hardly take any time to find out what stress really is, in spite we feel it and talk about it day in and day out.

We imagine that the human race had no stress. But in fact human beings have always been experiencing stress of one kind or other with ongoing addition from generation to generation due complexity of life. The technological advances of last 100+ years, particularly last 50 are supposed to have made life easier, but ironically they have intensified the stress in our daily existence, mainly by increasing expectations and standards of performance.

No longer is it enough for example to keep the house clean, the clothes washed and food on the table. We feel compelled to keep the house looking like a magazine advertisement, the clothes whiter than white and completely wrinkle free and to cook food of gourmet standard.

Washing machines, microwave ovens, computers, may have taken the drudgery out of work but they have also moved expectations and goals even further out of reach.

Stress is a part of our lives, which though can be overcome, can’t be avoided. Indeed it is very often a topic of conversation such as: the stress of living in a recession, executive life, unemployment, retirement, inflation, unstable government, lack of exercise, family problems, pollution, the death of relative or friend yield stress. Even school children are placed under enormous stress, caused by host of factors such as parental expectations, fear of unemployment in the future and peer pressure, to name but a few.

It is hard to define exactly what stress is as the word ‘stress’ like ‘success’, ‘failure’ or ‘happiness’, means different things to different people. Is ‘stress’ really a synonym for ‘distress’? , is it effort, fatigue, pain, fear, the need for concentration, the humiliation of censure or even an unexpected great success which requires complete reformulation of one’s entire life? The answer to all the questions is yes & no. That is what makes the definition so difficult. Every one of those conditions produces stress, but none can be singled out as being it, since the world applies equally to all the others.

The word itself comes from Latin ‘strictus’ meaning to draw tight. The word ‘stress’ then became absorbed into the old French word ‘estrecier’, meaning to straighten or narrow. These meaning accurately describe what actually happens to our body when we experience excess stress. Our muscles and connective tissues tighten, we tend to hold our limbs and torso straighter and our blood vessels narrow. These are all the characteristics of our natural ‘Fight or Flight’ response, the condition that enabled primitive humans either to stand and confront danger or to flee it.