I went to the doctor recently and was told, “you’d be surprised how many people are medicated”. When you consider the amount of people that drink, at times heavily, the number grow higher. I consider alcohol a form of self-medication similar to Prozac and Paxil. The question that strikes me is, why? Why are people requiring such high levels of therapy, medication and means to release stress?

I don’t think anyone can argue the simple point of, before Paxil and Prozac existed, no one took them. Pretty straight forward. So what did people do before these things were invented? I have the theory that they didn’t do anything, they didn’t need to. The human of today is not the human of yesterday. People didn’t have as much things to worry about as we do today. News was what the last person who came through town told you. Today, you can’t get away from news alerts about storms that happen 3000 miles away. Every hour of waking life is filled with TV, Internet, work, hobbies, etc. Even the games we play can be stressful. I’ve played a few that almost felt like work to accomplish anything.

One thing is for certain, people in today’s world have many times more stimuli than those before. Work, television, the Internet, we are bombarded by ‘noise’. Our brains are processing more than the brains of 200 years ago. It’s simply true. People 200 years ago didn’t have the Internet. They had the local pub or the family room. They talked, they interacted, they socialized face to face.

So what does that mean? What can we do about it? Anything? Should we just accept the fact that we are pushing ourselves and take the medication to help? I think the bottom is, the amount of stress we subject to ourselves due to life in the 21st century is more than the human body was meant to handle.

That said, we seem to be dealing with it alright. The average life expectancy is higher than it ever has been for the average person.  Is it all a facade though? Are we living better or just longer? Sure we go to the doctor, have clean drinking water, sanitized living conditions, and under those conditions the human body can live to a ripe old age. But are we living any better?

I like to craft my opinions around my own life. It’s the only thing I really have authority on. I myself work all day long. I work in the IT industry and have both a full time 9-5 job as well as do consulting on the side. l am constantly plugged in. I have this blog and several other websites I maintain. I check the Internet constantly for the latest news on software design and development and SharePoint related issues. But I don’t have the high levels of stress that others have.

I realized at my last place of employment that stress is just bad. It will eat you up and spit you out. So much so that I cut my commute in half, found a more relaxing position that was still interesting and realized the art of ‘not caring’.

What? Not caring? How can you not care? Easy. Just don’t do it. Now, that’s not to say don’t do a good job or don’t care so much you give up. It means, don’t care as much as you do about your family about you job, or the news, or the Internet. Having many lots of different stimuli isn’t going away anytime soon. We have to find a way to deal with all that stimuli. Some may use some type of technique like I have, don’t invest 100% in everything. Do a good job, do a great job, give 110% but don’t care so much about it that you’ll have night terrors. Others will take a medication that will biochemically counter act the stress levels in our bodies and tell our bodies to calm down. Which, honestly, I don’t find to be a terribly bad thing. If it helps, if it has a genuine reason, why not. Truth is, we are putting ourselves through hell and need to balance it out. If you need to meditate, not care as much, take something to help with the stress, do it. Our bodies weren’t meant for the stresses we put it through, it’s ok if it needs a help in dealing with things.

This is a primer post for my next topic, Anxiety. I have it and have suffered from panic attacks. I plan on posting some of my experiences and methods I’ve used to deal with it. Medication, meditation, relaxing more, I’ve tried many things. My next post will go over those things in the hopes it can help others.

So, is that it? We can look different, we can think different, can we even act different? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Have you ever known someone that seemed less interested in things? Have you ever known someone that you’d classify as a risk taker? Someone whose adrenaline doesn’t get going unless they are jumping out of a perfectly good airplane? I have. Many of them. They can’t sit in offices. They are always bored. They simply don’t react to things like the majority does. They are less responsive to stimuli that would normally elicit reactions ranging from excitement or surprise. They experience what I’ve heard called a low heart rate. Not bradycardia mind you. They are perfectly healthy. It’s simply that some people are genetically calmer and less excitable than others.

I find this to be fascinating. I myself tend to fall on the opposite side of the spectrum. I get excited quite easily and often am jubulient about the most innocent of things. Here’s a great example from my childhood, when watching cartoons one day I saw Cobra Commander appear on the Transformers. He was older and there was no Cobra anymore of course but it was him. I was jumping out of my skin I was so excited.

So, that’s neat right. Some people aren’t excitable and some people are. Now what. Well, the point of this isn’t so much that these people are out there, but rather, how to know it when you see it. I was once a flight student. I was learning to get my pilot’s license and my instructor was one of these people. She seemed as if she didn’t care about things, she travelled constantly, she flew planes for a living. Sounds like an exciting life but she was terribly bored. Turns out, it wasn’t that she had a bad child hood, or ate bad foods or did anything to warrant such a demeanor. It was simply that she was born resistant to stimuli that would normally have people dancing in the shoes.

If you happen to find yourself meeting someone that just doesn’t seem to be as animated as others you’ve met, they may very well not be built in a way that you are.