Having just waded through my taxes, the stress of modern life rears its head.  The tax process is bad enough, but throughout we deal with websites that don’t work, printers that don’t print, computers that don’t compute…

All this is just metaphor for how we live today.  We are burdened with stress that pervades our very being, with sensory overload, with constant demands on our attention:  debt, employment, minute-by-minute news feeds, car breakdowns, relationship problems, global scenes of crime and violence and politics, online friend overloads, electronic chipping and chirping, ambient noise, schedules and calendars, newsletters and updates and more emails…

None of this is natural to us.  These are not the stressors we’re designed to deal with.  And all of it takes us further and further from where we need to be, both as individuals and as a society.  What would it take to check out out of it all?  Can we just say “no”?