As I See It / November 2005
Quick Fixings
Even nice people with good intentions make incomprehensible messes of their love life, career, health, finances and children. But, apparently, by internalizing an appropriate program or conceptualizing the proper process or completing the maximum number of reps or breathing in a precisely correct way, the mess can be fixed. For every unresolved guilt and every bad choice, there is a guru du jour with the mojo to make bad stuff go away. Like saving Tinker Bell, we just have to really believe for it to work.
From “Fifty ways to leave your lover” to the three day diet, the search for finite answers to infinitely difficult questions has become part of the American dream. The relentless pursuit is matched only by the inexhaustible response from pseudo specialists and charlatans.
Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is definitely a bummer. If we can launch rockets into space and perform microsurgery on brains, surely there’s a cure for what ails us - life.
Reducing stress has become the all-encompassing quest. Yoga, meditation and herbal supplements are the 21st century remedies for bad childhoods, bad habits, bad bosses and ungrateful children. An endless stream of stress reduction techniques pours forth from every medium-Eight Methods to Reduce Stress! Ten Exercises to Lower Stress! Five Secrets to Handling Stress! Stress has become the bubonic plague of our time and enumeration is key to its eradication. The more advanced technology and medicine gets, the more eagerly we embrace ancient, nebulous and magical therapies.
But, stress isn’t a disease. It isn’t the problem. It’s a consequence. Allowing thirty minutes to get ready when it will take an hour causes stress. Trying to complete a project without the necessary tools or resources causes stress. An exploitive lover, a manipulative child, an overbearing employer, all cause stress. It isn’t the stress that needs to be addressed.
Being late or unprepared, feeling guilty for being thoughtless or selfish causes stress. But stress isn’t the real issue.
There is a fix. But it isn’t quick. It requires taking responsibility for each decision, each action. Worse, it requires work to find the different decisions and actions that will make a difference.
A woman who is stressed because she doesn’t make enough money, doesn’t need diet supplements and stretching exercises. She needs education, training, career counseling, day care and job opportunities.
The hours women spend on manicures, massages, hair appointments and changing clothes is time men use for work, reading or rest. Perhaps there will never be “enough” time but making the best use of each of the allotted twenty four hours is what ultimately affects stress levels-and the quality of life.
The anger, fear, guilt and pain of loss from divorces and break ups are terribly stressful. But, trying to handle the stress without acknowledging the cause is impossible. Some things are going to hurt.
Focusing on stress when the problem is pain is as futile, and exhausting, as trying to blow out an electric light bulb.
Stress tips and techniques, like magic, sometimes work and sometimes don’t, because, like magic, they require that we look the other way. Stress may be just another word for life. There’s no quick fix. What will work, sooner or later, is to do the hard things, the things that aren’t on a Top Ten list, things that will matter more than a day, like education and discipline, things like deciding what is important and what is not, and giving up the not.
The effort it takes to make a successful life is considerable, no matter how success is measured. But, it’s an inside job. We have to save ourselves. PL
Copyright © 2005-2006 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
Femme Fair 2006
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