By: Shazia Yousuf
“Love is in the air everywhere I look around
Love is in the air every sight and every sound
And I don't know if I'm being foolish
I don't know if I'm being wise
But it's something that I must believe in
And it's there when I look in your eyes.”
Whenever I listen to this part of the song, I feel like replacing the word “love” with “stress”. Stress is something that is becoming a significant part of our daily routine. Life is moving at a fast pace. In the course of this race against time, we get stressed at small even very insignificant things. There is nothing abnormal about this behavior as the threats that life throws at us starting from the undue load shedding, never ending traffic jams, extremely high utility bills, long working hours, job insecurity, running the house in limited budget, problems in relationships, all add up to the list of ingredients for the sizzling hot dish of “stress” on life’s menu booklet.
Women are a major victim to this. They tend to have more responsibilities and less time to spend on their own needs. Although the general trend is changing, still a lot of working women also look after home and children without much help from their husbands, juggling between work, house work, settling issues relating to children, their school and petty disputes among siblings. If living in joint family, it also means keeping the in-laws happy and putting up a with mood swings of other family members. A house wife also faces these day to day issues. Sensitive relationship issues with husbands, mothers in law and for that matter even maid, driver and gardener contribute to stress in the daily lives of women. Looking at it from the other perspective, mothers (in law) have also to cope with the unpredictable and sometimes unexplainable attitude issues. Differences of opinion and cold wars, which are a part of every normal household, put everyone, especially women in a lot of stress and sadly there is no escape.
Stress is damaging. It slowly poisons and develops into chronic ailments. It has a paralyzing effect, stops you from doing anything constructive, or even enjoying what you have. It eventually ruins the overall environment of your home and adds up to the mess in life!
Lately, I feel as if my life has been like a whirlwind. Blowing this way and that, but not actually "doing" anything worthwhile or achieving something. It really gets to me at times and I sit and wonder "What am I doing?” I am constantly trying to do this, or do that, but really none of those things are of major importance, and it won’t matter if they don't get done (at least once in a while).
