Modern Stress

One of the things that causes a lot of today's stress is how we live.

One of the great advantages of living today is all the things we now have and "enjoy" over what the world was like say 100 years ago.

Most of our ancestors lived a much simpler life which involved working close enough to home to walk to work, coking meals at home, seldom traveling any great distances and finding entertainment in simpler ways since there was no Television, movies were new and radios were a recent innovation.

Reading, talking, eating as a family and participating in community events or church events was the primary activities.

Of course 100 years ago we were already entering the modern age and had movies, radios, automobiles, etc, although not at all to the degree we would later.

Of course there were disadvantages.  We didn't have the medical advances that have greatly extended our life spans.

Generally though we were fitter with much less obesity since walking and working hard were pretty universal.

There was stress and its hard to characterize that, all stress is individualized, but for the millions of recent immigrants and those here a little longer, the stress was likely related to making ends meet and survival.

I'm sure there were things people wanted that they stressed over, but it just seems like we stress over much more superficial things in our consumer based material existence.

We can't go back as a nation, but each of us can in many ways eliminate unnecessary stress from our day to day existence simply by wanting less.

It might not be good for the economy, but you might find it relaxing.