Why, today,

is everyone so stressed out? Almost every event of the

hour is approached with a feeling of dread and urgency

that everything is about as bad as a Bill Gates' haircut.

What is it, that sends dads right past their child's

newest refrigerator art to get that beer to relax? How is

it that traffic figures as a leading cause of high blood

pressure? What is it that prompts people today to have no

sense of humor at all, about anything?

Quicker than Robert Downey,

Jr., can go back to jail, we all seem to let one more

thing get to us. That is one root of our stress, that

there is just "more" to deal with. Whereas, in

one era, people had a few simple necessities of life to

deal with, now we have more. E-mail gets it to us

quicker, news show report on it faster.

One-car families changed to

two-, then three-. One-phone families went to two, then

to the phone machine, then to cellular. We have 20

presidential candidate choices now. Heck, nowadays, even

our sitcoms have six "Friends" to keep up with.

Fear plays a big part in

all this tenseness, too. We can hardly say 10 words these

days without offending half the population. You've got

your Democrats and Republicans, men and women, black and

white, Asian and Hispanic, gays and straight. You've got

your liberals and conservatives, smokers and nonsmokers,

drinkers and nondrinkers, your religious and

nonreligious. Paper or plastic?

I mean, really, how deep

could you get into a conversation without offending

anyone these days? How would you talk to a liberal,

Republican, smoking, non-drinking, Hispanic lesbian? Talk

about tense, the only thing I might have in common with

her, is the urge to wear highly-taxed, Mexican-made

flannel shirts. But, a lot of people wouldn't even think

that is funny.

Somewhere in it all, we are

too tense because we are made to feel guilty. Like, I am

to blame for what some oppressive group of people I am

not even kin to did a millennium ago. Like, I am to blame

for what some maniacal mad man did an ocean away. I am

sorry for things that happened, but I am doing the best I

can to do what's right and I am sorry I am just not gonna

feel the stress for dirty deeds done eons ago.

Tenseness is as much a

ghost as the night air in "The Blair Witch

Project." It is the way our minds play tricks on us

to convince us of impending doom. And it is no wonder.

With helicopter shots of plane-crash wreckage, with

treatment-resistant germs, with day-care workers with

criminal records, who wouldn't be anxious? But times have

always been rough. We just have to concentrate on the

great things in life, like family, friends and the

freedom to have ketchup with that.

Life should not be so

tense. Life is a game in which the object is to figure

out the object of the game. So, why so tense? I think we

should take the advice someone gave General Custer at

Little Big Horn, "Just enjoy yourself, it won't kill

ya."

[E-mail Peachtree Citian

Billy Murphy at [email protected].]

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