Suddenly had a thought yesterday evening as I was having dinner at a coffeeshop. I realised nowadays most coffeeshops and hawker centers have cleaners who help stallholders collect back their used utensils. Stallholders now only need to cook and serve their food. I remember back then, stallholders always need to collect their utensils back so that they have enough utensils to serve their food. So I pressume, hawkers these days should be less burdened by the need to clear their customers' utensils, and hence, should have less stress. This thought provoked me to think of the increasing stress which modern people are always complaining about.
So I thought of a few things which we don't have to do nowadays.
At home-children who have maids at home. Maids do almost everything at home. Children's task at home is just to study. More help at home should have created less stress for the children and yet...they complained about added stress!
At home again-children have tutors for different subjects. Hmm...tutors are supposed to help the kids to do well in their studies. More help at home should have created less stress for the children and yet...they complained about being more stressful!
At work-we have modern machinery like photocopying machine, pcs, etc. These were supposed to help modern beings, to make their work less of a burden and yet...modern beings complained about life becoming more stressful!
So I asked this questions-Are the increase in modern machiney or just human helper supposed to increase or decrease human beings' stress?
I think I got the answer, stress is due to human beings' unlimited desire to own something.
Look at this- Your parents want you to study well so that you can have a good life later. Good life=big houses, more $$$, fancy cars,etc. If only we are contented with a simple life (Simple life=just a simple house enough to provide shelter for us, enough $$$ to eat, etc), we will have less desires, which translates into less stress.
So today as you are reading this, just pause and ponder... do you want a stressfully good life or a stressfree simple life?
Oh before I signed off, yesterday at the book fair, I was approached by a student helper to buy greeting cards made by psychiatric patients. These people suffered from serious depression and has been treated at Instititue of Mental Health(IMH) before. They need lots of focus to make this card by hand as their hand tremble or they had difficulty staying focus. I guess these people suffered alot of stress before. Knowing their plight, I willingly bought 2 cards from the student helper. Ponder...anyone of us maybe making this card in the future if we don't stop stressing about life now.
YNWA @ 9:12 PM
