By BILLY MURPHY
Contributing Writer

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 HimOnWry@aol.com.]

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