There are many contributors to stress in our modern way of life. Stress is known to be a far-reaching factor in the development of health issues. Stress puts strain on our hearts and other organs. Even though we can't see all the negative manifestations of stress right away, we still feel that stress in life.
All that stress makes us want to find a way out, to escape it. The modern world has a lot of outlets for our stress, to escape the stress, but also escapes from the boredom of our lives. Many of us lack significant meaning and purpose in the bigger picture, being satisfied by our personal sensory pleasures and gratifications.
To escape the stress and boredom, many consume food that provides them with a sense of feeling good. Others do drugs to relax or feel different. But most people consume entertainment of various kinds to drown out the boredom, to phase out, zone out, veg out, numb ourselves and escape.
Drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, entertainment, gossip, TV, media and games are all used to fill time, to not be bored, to have new sensory experiences feed our thoughts and feelings, to experience sensations. They are distractions that keeps our time, energy and attention locked up in a cage of frivolity, keeping our vision looking at things that don't really matter, keeping us from looking deeper into our world and reality to see the hard truths we want to avoid facing.
People don't want to talk about heavier issues, they want to talk about “light”, mostly pointless and irrelevant topics of conversation, or superfluous chit-chat small-talk about their personal lives. The desire to talk about more meaningful things that matter more, is not too present. That's too "heavy". That's too negative. Those topics bring people "down", making them "feel-bad" about the condition of the world. They just want to "feel-good" and live in a positivity mask with rose-colored glasses.
Ask someone what the most important 3 things are in their lives, and you will likely get "family", and "friends" in there usually, some people have "money" as highly important, or a "career", but most of all you will get people to say "being happy" is part of what is important for them. After all, that's the American Dream, the blind pursuit of happiness as a goal in life to maximize and focus on.
Our actions are being driven by the pursuit of happiness. Don’t worry, just be happy, ignorance is bliss, right? Who needs higher ideals to focus on, like truth? Who answers that truth is important in their life? Not that many.
The happiness dream is distraction to keep us focused on feeling-good in life, and avoid the negative that can bring you down, but needs to be dealt with if we want a sane world.
"Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it. But those who do will become well."
– Vernon Howard
Rather than seek to escape the boredom because we lack a truer, higher and realer purpose in our lives to spend our time, energy and attention on, we should learn to develop a care for truth to motivate and rive us towards using our time, energy and attention in more meaningful ways.
We have to be willing to be affected by reality, and feel the worry, anxiety, stress, discomfort, insecurity, doubt, and fear as a signal and trigger to wake us up to realize the supreme importance of truth in life. Then to go out and seek it and figure out what is wrong int he world and with our lives, and what is making us so stressed, sot hat we can change things for the better.
There is limited time in life. Spend in wisely. If things need to be healed and repaired, be it in the world or in ourselves, if now is not the time, when is? If it's not up to us to do anything about it, then who is it up to?
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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