괜찮아요

You know what, I was attending this course last Friday which talked about one of the many challenges youths of today face. Things like having no time to reflect; pace of life is moving far too fast; too much work to handle; having to meet up to expectations; wanting to be accepted and to belong to a group; etc. And what do all these boil down to?

S-T-R-E-S-S.

‘Stress’ has evolved into more than just a noun. It’s verb! [Just meaning it's an action word now =D] I mean, hey, I’ve never bowed to that six-lettered word till I came to college. Manz~ was I surprised to find myself in this depressing situation after near to two decades in this world. We are living in a world so competitive that we are FOREVER trying to catch up and then to come up with something even better than before; it’s just like a dog chasing its own tail; a never-ending chase and an adrenaline pumping lifestyle.

I’m not sure what’s our take for this, but to me at least, we may be ‘cleverer’ than people of the past, playing around with tools that were never dreamt of previously, but are we losing more than what we gained? Are we the master of the tools or have we succumb to being slaves to them? Are we always rushing forward so much so that we’ve lost control and focus of what’s really important in life?

Well, I’m not sure if this would be a good analogy, but in a heavy traffic, if you just want to get out of it by ‘trying to gain an edge’ over the others, you might be trying to overtake the cars in front of yours; and whenever there’s a slight gap in sight, you step on the accelerator and sped [for a little], and the next thing you know, ‘kaboom‘ –> an accident results. What do you lose in this situation? 1) No, you didnt manage to get past the heavy traffic and instead, you might be even later for your next appointment due to the accident; 2) You might be held responsible for the accident and need to pay for the damages; 3) In the worst case senario, you lose your life along with it.

Studies show that stress will create anxiety, and anxiety will lead to depression. If working adults are overwhelmed by the workload and the kind of stress that they can hardly handle, how can we expect our younger generation to bear with all these? Does it necessarily mean that if you are borned in this fast(er) paced society of today, you are naturally borned with a better immune system to cope with stress? Just look at how popular counselling services are with people of today. This phenomenon is not uniquely belonging to just the adults, the children and youths are seeking for help too! If we overlook this increasingly scary trend, we might just be sending our kids towards the dark side of depression.

I would really hate to see what new tricks kids come up with in order to escape from all these stress. Looking at the increasingly difficult syllabus for even the elementary students is distressing for me. Childhood should not be just about attending classes, courses, doing homework, having tuitions, etc! What kind of stories and memories will these batch of kids bring with them when they are in their ripe age, wanting to share some childhood memories with their grandchildren? “Oh, when grandpa was a child, I attended piano class, taekwondo training, golf lessons and watched documentaries after school. Sometimes, I had a tutor who would come and coach me and made me do about 20 different assessment books in a year…” –> where’s the “my friends and I caught spiders in the drains” kind of stories?!!

It’s so scary sometimes, to know that having inadequate amount of sleep is a norm. We can well compare with one another how little sleep we have [and we keep telling ourselves that sleep is highly important for health] and will be impressed if anyone is able to keep to a 8hrs nightly sleep. No kidding! :p Well, if all of us were borned with a silver spoon in our mouths, and we do not need to be concerned with household expenses or financial problems, well and good; we can just concentrate with being a good student who is active in CCAs and studies. But NO, not all of us are able to achieve that. It’s common to see students doing part-time job(s) on top of their studies and CCAs.

Sometimes, it’s not much of a choice. We try to convince ourselves that we can cope and we know there’s not really any other way out since you do need the money to pay your school fees and buy your textbooks and pay for your transportation and meals if you do not want to add on to the burden of your poor parents [when people say "well, if you can't cope with jobs on top of school, don't do any part-time jobs", they totally missed the point that not all families are financially stable. Given a choice, of course everyone would love to put all your energy and focus onto doing well for your studies, aint it so?].

*Sigh*