As I have become close with so many fellow-fibrates, I am learning a lot about the way we think, act and react to life and its multitude of challenges. I have said it once and will say it again, I have yet to meet a stronger group of people anywhere! But as I maintain my relationships with my family and friends, the non-fibrates in my life, I feel I am becoming aware of a vicious theme. It has been there all along, and in fact I was a willing participant in its evil clutches before I became ill. I cannot speak for any other country, for I have only ever lived in the USA, but we are working ourselves to death! If pure physical exhaustion does not take you down, the emotional and mental stress of being over-worked and over-stressed and under-appreciated and under-valued will! The commonplace that has become the middle class working environment is starting to resemble a toothpaste tube. They will squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until there is nothing left of you. And once your productivity suffers because of it, out you go! Companies are downsizing and unemployment is at a dangerous high. Yet those that are lucky enough to have kept their jobs are doing the work of 2 people (at least) and burning out fast! We enjoy lifestyles we cannot afford, drive cars that cost far more than our budgets allow, saw what happened when we started buying houses that we could not truly pay for and the retirement age is 15 years older than it was when I was a kid!
A thought crossed my mind. Are we the sensitive ones that could not keep up with unrealistic demands on our lives and constant and pervasive stress? Are we actually a normal reaction to a society gone awry? I for one can say going into a salaried position with no overtime "allowed" but impossible to do my job without was the first step of many down the slope to developing my illness. When I go out in the world I see angry, bitter people ready to snap at the slightest thumb of their string. They yell at their kids, salespeople, gasoline attendants, anyone really, upon the slightest provocation. In our effort to achieve and accumulate all these things, status items that show the neighbors and strangers walking down the street we are worthy, we are trading in our humanity. And ultimately our happiness. For if a Fibrate knows anything, we know happiness does not lie in the possession of material objects.
We are a very young country descended from immigrants. People from every reach of the globe who risked everything and worked tirelessly to the bone to make a better life for themselves and their future generations to come. Those expectations die hard! 200+ years later we are still doing it, but our basic needs are met! Most have food, clothing, shelter and stability. Grocery stores, shopping malls. Washing machines and refrigerators. What the generations before us worked so hard for has been achieved! Most enjoy a pretty darn good quality of life in the USA, and I am not only talking about the affluent and upper-middle-class. But it is not enough, never enough. So we keep pushing, reaching, grabbing at that next thing that will fill our empty hearts, all the while missing the point completely. Maybe CFS and FM are much more of an environmental by-product than we give them credit for. Or maybe it is just that living in pure flight or fight mode day in and day out for years took its toll and took us down, sooner than later, because of the perfect mixture of genetics, expectation, environment and inherited behaviors. Just some food for thought.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
