Personal Stress and World Stress

Blog#81- 9/3/21

PERSONAL STRESS AND WORLD STRESS
By
Richard Davis

There are few people who do not experience some degree of stress in their daily lives. We figure out ways to cope and we move on, trying to live in the moment as best we can. Lately I have been stressed more than I ever have in my entire life and am trying to get past it but it is proving difficult. Here’s my story.

I will spare you details but my wife and I have bought a house in Brattleboro and she has sold her place in Massachusetts. My house in Guilford, where I have lived for the past 41 years is for sale. (Contact me if you want to buy it.) We are in the process of moving into our new house. We knew this whole process would be complicated but we were not prepared for the level of anxiety we are experiencing. We have each other and that helps a lot.

I am not writing this to look for sympathy because we are not the first people on the planet to go through this process. We will survive and when the snow starts falling I hope we can look out the window of our new home and tell each other how happy we are that we are finally settled.

But there is more than personal stress that many people like myself and my wife are dealing with. I believe it has to do with the crazy times we are living in. Some people have come to realize that a steady diet of national and world news is not healthy for them and they have consciously eliminated the bombardment from their lives. I envy them.

Then there are those of us, most likely the majority, who take in the news in a steady daily stream. The mainstream news has always been focused on catastrophe and malfeasance but it seems that during the past few years the news has been worse than ever. What I mean by worse is that events have taken on a higher level of intensity and as a result have a greater potential to effect the psyche of people who hear the news.

The ending of the war in Afghanistan has made me come close to tears a number of times. So many people whose lives have been torn apart. So many innocent victims of warfare and ideological battles who wanted no part of the madness. It does make me realize that my petty house issues are something that Afghan people would be happy to experience.

Then there are all the weather-related catastrophes that are constantly playing out. I don’t know how many more scenes of people losing everything they had in the world as they flee a fire I can handle before I feel like someone has stuck a knife in my heart.

And now we are seeing the devastation that has taken place in Louisiana and watch as people sit on the last piece of furniture they have while they tell news reporters that they have lost everything they had, that they have no food and do not know how they will ever rebuild their lives.

Those horrible events are only the tip of the world iceberg of catastrophe and mayhem. They cause anxiety for all of us even if we are not directly affected. The time is quickly approaching when more and more of us may have to make the decision to limit out intake of so much world news.