Stress

Stress walked into the room this morning and sat down on the couch.

I was already a bit grumpy due to the fact that I had to be up early this morning and had not gotten a great deal of sleep anyway. Fantastic, I thought: just one more fabulous way to start the morning.

"So how's it going?" Stress asked in the rising tone which indicates a person knows very well how its going as he stretched out, nearly knocking over my coffee in the process.


I grimaced as I rescued my coffee from nearly going over. "Fine, fine" I said. "To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

Stress smiled broadly again. "Oh, nothing I suppose. You've just been spending a great deal of time with me lately in work, in not sleeping, in your personal life. I just thought that with all this time, we should probably just make a day of it."

I looked at the clock and sighed. I did not have time for this along with everything else I had to do today. "Look", I started, "today's a bit much for me and I'm really not going to have a lot of time to speak with you. Anything in particular, or just your usual 'Hey, the world is ending' routine?"

Stress smiled languidly. "I'll not be that easily deterred. You're under a lot of stress right now. You're eating up your personal life to make other parts of your life work. It's good for me, of course, because I thrive on this stuff. I actually just stopped by to tell you to keep it up."

I started to rebuke him, then stopped. He was right, of course: my entire personal life, my spiritual life, my family life, my romantic life - all of it was becoming sacrificed to the great tyranny of the urgent and stress.

"Leaving me with what?" I said out loud, forgetting anyone else was in the room with me.

Stress smiled again. "Oh, with nothing really - except me, of course."

He slowly stood back up. "Guess I'm done here" he remarked as he stretched back and forth. "Hopefully I'll see you again today. Maybe not."

And with that he was gone, leaving me to mull over my life through stress's prism as seen through a half warm cup of coffee.