Everyone we meet these days seems to be 'STRESSED!'- it appears to have become a fact of life. When did this awful word become the norm in everyday living? More and more I feel that there is some monopolistic effort at work to move people away from simplicity and freedom into a world of complication , confusion and unhappiness.
I remember years ago organising a class project around the theme of advertising. It was the time when the media through newspapers and television was really beginning to work hard at its insidious consumerist campaign. I remember pointing out to a class of teenagers the way advertising was brainwashing the public into feeling a real need to have more and more! A need to" keep up with the Jones'", be more healthy, be more beautiful, save time with various appliances, have more leisure., don't be the odd one out.---you get the picture? The consumerist, materialistic age had arrived with a bang! There was a massive campaign to lure the masses into it and it seems we have been lured.
I go into a local store to find my favourite, simple soap, toothpaste, cleaner, food even, and I can't find them! Instead I find a real glut of products of so many shapes, sizes. labelling etc, that my head begins to burst and I'm thrown into a dizzy, mesmerised, confused state. The same picture with so called medicinal drugs.We are being hypnotised!
It's not so long ago, here in Malta, that there was no sign of a cell phone. Suddenly everyone had one'glued'to their ear---and voices were growing more high pitched, tense, loud and accelarated by the minute. In fact the accelaration factor seems to have increased in all spheres, ---and no-one seems happier!
As far as I can, I just need to be aware of this and take some kind of stand to preserve my own peace of mind and sense of freedom. Oh for simplicity! And I know that there are so many of us who agree.I need to try to find the time each day to be still and unclutter my mind from its maelstrom of anxious thoughts, I have to seek out the simple, the beautiful, the loving, the positive,the creative, the spiritual, ----and let these nourish and sustain me. I still believe with all of my heart that it is a simply beautiful world,- and I try to move on this way with faith and optimism, believing that all WILL be well.
Mo.
'Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.'----Confucious.
'The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things'.----Elise Boulding.
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