It's 4.30am. At this hour, I'm not normally sat in front of a computer, typing. I'm normally asleep. But I'm not. Why? Well, stress, apparently.

It's the end of my degree in about three weeks time, so I'm busy writing my last ever essays and revising for my last ever exams (well, in theory, at least). This pressure to succeed, or at least not to fail, creates stress, and so I can't sleep. I don't feel stressed, but then I don't usually feel stressed when I should do. But seeing as I'm awake, and writing this, I'm either a vampire or I'm stressed. I think it's probably the latter.

1. Stress does not exist.

That's the one point guide. Stress, you see, is a figment of your imagination. You are not really stressed. Why? Well, the chances are that if you feel stress, then you're a Western middle-class person who doesn't have to suffer real hardship. After all, the starving people in the Third World don't complain that they're, you know, feeling a bit stressed today, what with the famine and death and all. Do they bollocks; they complain that they're starving, not that they've got a bit of a headache and work's getting on top of them. Because stress is unique to the so-called developed world, and to the middle, business or intellectual classes.

Let's face it. Your life isn't really that fucking hard, is it? Compare your life to that of a working class person in a factory or on a rice field. They're people who really suffer. Having too many assignments due in or having to do work late at the office does not constitute mental or physical hardship, as after all you've still got a home to go back to, and you don't have to worry about starvation or being shot by a totalitarian government for being of the wrong religion.

Really, stress is just the self-pitying whining of a bourgeoisie who've forgotten what it actually means to be under real pressure. Okay, so a doctor or nurse, for example, working a 24 hour shift is different; after all, they're constantly having to save people's lives, and come up against death and suffering. Doctors suffer, but they aren't stressed in the way whining office workers and students are stressed.  Office work or education is not true hardship.

But hang on. If this is the truth, then I shouldn't be stressed. I should comfort myself that I don't have to, you know, do real work, and just go to bed and stop worrying. However, the problem is that while when compared to real suffering, stress seems pathetic and insignificant, I don't happen to live nearby to a rice field or a convenient village of starving Africans. All I have to compare my life to is other whining students with the same workload as me. Compared to other pathetic middle-class students, my workload is quite large, and I'm under quite a lot of pressure. So while this pressure is still minuscule and not really life-threatening, I'm influenced into thinking that it is.

But, like, why? It seems pretty daft that the rich and powerful people of the world have managed to make themselves miserable; making their problems seem like mountains, rather than teeney little molehills. I suppose part of the reason is that work and success have become bound together; we're taught from an early age that to fail in work or education is to fail in life. So every day we're frightened of making mistakes which will impact our whole lives. Meanwhile your average East Asian working in a rice field knows that if he makes a few mistakes, all that will happen is that he'll get a bollocking from his boss. His work is menial, and not linked to his own life or success, and if he works well he won't get a promotion. He just does his toil, then he goes home and forgets about it. We stressed Westerners, on the other hand, find that our work is carried over into our 'personal lives', and what happens in the workplace effects our futures.

But really stress is just something invented by psychiatrists to justify their own existence. If we put our lives into perspective, really what we think of as stress is just our subconscious having a whinge. But, of course, we're prevented from separating ourselves from the influences of other stressed people, so we continually forget our troubles are unimportant.

So, what's the answer? Easy; kill all your friends, emigrate to China and spend your life working on a rice field. Say goodbye to stress forever.

I think I'm going to go to bed now.
 
 
 

Bookmark this page