Stress
We all would agree that life in a post industrial modern urban society exposes us to very high levels of stress. Whether we are students, employees, managers, professionals or self employed, it seems we are required to do more and more just to keep pace with the competition. Survival, success, and the quest for an ever higher material quality of life, all of the above turn our lives into a constant struggle. While the experts tell us that in particular cases stress can be desirable and even beneficial, most of them agree that in general it is the source of many of the psychological and physical problems that afflict us today.
The question then obviously is how to reduce, relieve, control and overcome stress. Two popular solutions which we frequently opt for are those of the “weekend” and the “holiday”.
Typically, you work hard all week looking forward all the time to the week end when you will relax and have fun! Even before Friday arrives, you are making plans for the weekend. You arrange to meet friends, go out to dinner, go to a discotheque, attend a concert or a sporting event, watch a movie, go jogging, play mini golf, go swimming and so on. As soon as Friday evening comes, you rush home, shower and change and then you are off to relax and enjoy yourself. The whole weekend flashes by in a torrent of furious activity. Monday morning, you drag yourself out of bed and exhausted and depressed, you go back to another week of work.
The holiday is surely a far superior solution to the problem of stress; isn’t it? You work hard all year, perhaps even put in a bit of over time, to save enough money to go on a really nice holiday when you can really relax and recharge your batteries. The last week of work, you have to work really hard because there are of course so many things that have to be done before you go away. When the wonderful moment to leave arrives, you rush home, throw far too many things into far too many suit cases, drag them all down to the car, drive to the airport, get stuck in a traffic jam, nearly miss your plane, then find out it has been delayed and spend the next six hours waiting around in the departure lounge. But never mind, you are finally on your way to that wonderful and much needed holiday which will make up for all the stress you have suffered all year long. As soon as you get there, you see all the sights recommended by the guide books, go shopping, swim, dive, play golf, tennis, go to a discotheque or even a casino, or maybe not. Maybe you decide just to relax under an umbrella on the beach, but there you are constantly pestered by locals who want to sell you things you don’t want. The sound system from a cafe up the beech is playing loud raucous music. The sound of the sea is rent by the scream of speed boats. There are kids playing football on the beach and the ball keeps landing in your lap, and to make matters worse, there seem to be thousands of sand flies that have a particular liking for exotic flesh. When you have just about had enough, it begins to rain anyway. By now, all you want is to get home as soon as possible, but what began as a shower turns out to be a cyclone and all flights are grounded until conditions improve. Once again, you find yourself waiting in a departure lounge for what feels like an eternity. Finally, you get back home, tired, frustrated, fly-bitten and much, much poorer.
The above are examples of proactive aggressive approaches to combating stress. We might call this approach the “fighting fire with fire” approach. It is as if, bothered by the level of street noise, we were to turn up the volume on the TV and stereo all the way instead of closing the windows or even using ear plugs. When we indulge in a weekend whirl of activity or take an expensive foreign holiday, we are trying to drown our stress in a flood of enjoyable experiences, but all we actually succeed in doing is replacing one form of stress with another. “Fighting fire with fire” may sound like a good idea, and it may even work on occasion, but I don’t think we would want our local fire department to adopt the policy. It is surely a better idea to fight fire with water!
That’s exactly what Buddhism suggests. The answer to the problem of stress is retreat. Yes, retreat, or as the famous Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “A day of Mindfulness”.
Pick a day, any day when you don’t have to go to work. Don’t arrange to meet friends. Don’t touch the telephone, the TV, the radio, the stereo, the VCR or DVD. Don’t read the news paper, touch a computer or check your e-mail. Don’t go anywhere except perhaps for a leisurely walk if you can find a quiet place to do it. Stay at home. Don’t do anything related to work. Don’t undertake any big home improvement projects, spring cleaning or anything like that. At the most, you can tidy shelves, dust the books and little things like that. Take twice as long as usual to do everything. Take a slow motion bath. Fix a cup of tea. Prepare a simple meal at home. Read the Buddhist texts, do a little meditation too if you feel inclined. Be sure you take plenty of time to breath. In the evening eat only a light meal: a little fruit or a cup of milk.
It’s cheap, easy and it really works. You should try it sometime. I have. For more detailed instructions look at Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Miracle of Mindfulness”.