It's spring cleaning time

by Ron Arner

Every moment of life is important and worth living to the fullest. But what happens when your daily experiences are not what you want them to be? One of the most unpleasant feelings there is: stress. Stress will lead to frustration and other painful experiences if you don't take the responsibility to defeat it as soon as you can.

Some "stress" is good for you. If you didn't worry about getting to work on time every day or completing an important project by deadline you would soon be fired. The stress of being in prison prevents someone from stealing, the stress of not having clean clothes causes us to do laundry, and the stress of wanting to climb a mountain will make us achieve that goal despite the painful muscles and joints we will feel for some time afterwards.

A walk through the career section of any bookstore or library yields excellent advice on how to beat stress in your career — often just by reading the titles of the books. For example, there's Do What You Want, the Money Will Follow, What Color Is Your Parachute?, and To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love. In other words, choose a career that you are really interested in, not just one that pays well or provides excellent job security, if those are the only things that attract you to it. If you are truly interested in what you are doing, you won't mind when your boss asks you to stay late or you have to pick up the slack for someone who's out ill for the day. You'll view the challenges involved in a chosen career as obstacles to overcome rather than dull, dreary tasks that leave you exhausted at the end of each day and comatose every weekend, trying to "psyche yourself up" for another Monday morning.

After you've decided what career path you want to follow, reduce your stress level even more by setting some realistic achievement goals for yourself, like moving up from entry level pay and responsibility by the end of one or two years. You should also narrow the choices within the field you have chosen to a specific aspect of that field. For example, the field of Technical Communications is vast; do you want to concentrate on technical writing or content management? Are you interested in web design or online Help? If you can decide on the area you like the most, it will allow you to spend more time practicing and perfecting your skills in that area before broadening your expertise to other areas, which, of course, will make you even more marketable.

But we don't live in an ideal world. Even if you are on a "perfect" career path, things happen that you won't like and can't control. You'll lose a contract, you'll get laid-off, you'll make mistakes. Sound pessimistic? It's just realistic. When asked how to deal with difficult situations, Friedrich Nietzsche probably would have responded "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." A little melodramatic, maybe, but there is some truth to this. When unpleasant things happen, you basically have two choices: overcome the challenge facing you and continue on your career path, or choose a different path altogether and start over from the beginning.

Besides reducing stress by choosing a career you truly care about, there are many activities you can do outside of work that will help you as well. One of the best stress-reducing activities is a massage. Exercise of any kind is another excellent stress reducer, not to mention good for you, and, of course, we all have our favorite social activities that we participate in to keep life fun and enjoyable. For an inexpensive form of relaxation, I like to watch "quality" television, which I define as anything more intellectual or artistic than reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond.

I wanted to tape a quality show recently, and while shopping for blank videotapes came across the movie Salaam Bombay. Salaam Bombay, which won the Caméra D'Or (Golden Camera) Award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of a street child named Krishna who is forced to leave home and live on the streets of Bombay among drug addicts, pimps, and other undesirables. Talk about a stressful life! In addition to begging, borrowing, and stealing, Krishna has to endure child-labor conditions just to try to earn the 500 rupees he needs to return home.

Near the end of Salaam Bombay, Krishna witnesses an argument between the cruel drug lord of the neighborhood, Baba, and his lover who is trying to leave him and the brothel she works in. In a fit of rage Krishna stabs Baba, and then runs away, horrified by what he has just done. Eventually he finds a deserted street where he can sit down on a bench to catch his breath and try to collect his emotions. He pulls one of his only possessions, a toy top, out of his pocket, hoping it will take his mind off his troubles. He winds the string around the top, trying harder and harder to fight his emotions, but the stress is too much for him, and tears finally come to the little boy who until this point in the film has been cheerful and courageous despite all the hardships he has endured.

The feeling of humility I felt after watching the final scene of Salaam Bombay was more than a stress reliever. While I was saddened and shocked by the poverty in which Krishna lived (and the actor who played 11-year-old Krishna was a street child himself), I was also refreshed by the possibility that I can make the world a better place simply by fighting unnecessary worries and concerns and devoting my time and energy to a meaningful career path. And in light of the state of current affairs in the world, I was left hoping that all our world leaders would feel the same, so that we may actually be able to live out the rest of the 21st century in peace.