American Stress

Lately, I've been sitting at my desk each day, a little stressed out. Not the frazzled-get-me-another-cup-of-coffee-NOW kind of stressed. More like the nagging, agh-I-have-so-many-little-things-to-take-care-of kind of stressed. It's the stress that sits at the bottom of your stomach and festers like an ulcer (which I feared I had back in the days when I drank four cups of coffee each day).

How do I try to combat this stress? I write notes to myself, spreadsheets of reminders of how I need to call this place and that, make this appointment and that, go to this store and that. A whole lot of this and that's. A whole lot of stuff that doesn't get done, but somehow, I'm still exhausted at the end of the day.

Growing up in America, in the Silicon Valley, of all places, I think I've been accustomed to feeling just a little bit stressed out most of the time. It feels weird not to have something to do or be working towards. One pastor at church, Scott, recently told his story at one of our summer meetings, and he said something about how the Bay Area brings out the Type-A in people. The funny thing is, I just kind of take for granted that the Bay Area is not necessarily "normal" to most.

I was thinking this week, though, that this perpetual feeling of always being a little behind is a very American phenomenon, that manifests itself very acutely in the Bay Area. Geet's and Alin's blog entries about their Peruvian small-town adventures sort of prompted this entry. What would it be like to live somewhere where success and work and performance didn't drive the community around you? What would it be like to go to bed each night and not think about how much you've fallen behind that day?

Maybe that's why it's hard for me, an American, to really get when Jesus says "My grace is sufficient for you." How could something be sufficient when we haven't done enough, been enough, achieved enough?