image by Manki Kim from Unsplash The idea that stress is an unavoidable part of (specifically) Singaporean everyday life is so widely accepted that I was surprised when someone challenged that assumption. On one hand, it is a legitimate reason that our culture doesn’t make it easy to maintain control and balance over your life. The systems and infrastructures in place often are built without any consideration for anything other tha KPI, and are not conducive for people who want more than KPI. Education, workplace culture and expectations, the goals and lifestyle standards and values that our culture subconsciously and implicitly incalcate in us, all these function on the basis that people devote themselves 100% to them. Success, at least within the context of those systems, is not programmed to come otherwise. It's tempting to think the problem is just your culture. I’ve heard people fantasize about how working or living overseas would let them escape from the stress in Singapore, that there’s nothing we can do about it as it’s everywhere, it’s the basis of all our infrastructures, we just have to suck it up. But this minimizes the impact and role of individual responsibility. It’s naïve to think that other people in other cultures don’t face this problem—they do, perhaps manifested differently, but they do. Changing your location is just a quick-fix. Sooner or later you’re going to find yourself feeling stressed again, and the answer is not packing your bags once more. This is my own opinion, but I think of Christ’s words when He called us to “be in the world, not of it.” The importance of the individual witness we have, each in our corner—not isolating ourselves and avoiding the problems in the world, but actively doing what we can to make a difference, wherever we are. The next easiest response to fantasizing about moving overseas is to play the cynic and shrug in fatalistic doom. Just suck it up. Everyone you know is complaining of the same thing, after all. If you don’t want to be broke or an absolute failure you just have to accept being stressed out, right? This again is actually just another way of accepting to, and conforming to, the culture around us—not exactly a very godly culture either, as you can see if you consider its role models, goals, definition of success, and the route to get there. How do we respond to stress? How do we deal with stress and perhaps more importantly, are we unconsciously expecting/reinforcing stress in our lives? Like it or not, the choices you make reflect your priorities, since much of life is about trade-offs/opportunity cost. We can make choices that enable us to live more thoughtfully, more purposefully, more meaningfully; more restfully, more peacefully, with more time for others, with more time for things that matter. It sounds so ideal, doesn’t it? Everyone talks about work life balance, but it’s become just another impossibly unrealistic concept like owning your own car and house for millenials—and a whole lot more abstract. What exactly is work life balance and how do we achieve it? Don’t wait for the perfect job to fall into your lap, a family which doesn’t give you problems, supportive friends who chio (invite out) you at convenient times, an understanding boss, the end of this big project, when you’ve caught up on your sleep debt, when you’ve gotten into the habit of getting up early instead of sleeping through six alarms every morning and rushing out of the door. For most people, most of the time, it’s not a big drastic decision that radically alters your everyday schedule and your plan for the next five years (there are too many “taking off to travel the world for a year how about you?” posts online giving people the wrong impression that it’s all or nothing; either you continue being stressed out or you have to do something radical that usually entails you quitting your job and throwing responsibilities—financial or otherwise—to the wind. That’s nice, Karen, but we can’t all be doing that. If you can do that, well, that’s nice; but for those of us who can’t, does it mean we can’t do anything about our current situation? Whether this boils down to the decisions you make on saving/spending money, the goals you form for yourself, leaving a job or changing the way you work in it, finding alternatives, or managing your time, each choice you make is the same thing—you sacrifice or give up one thing in order to achieve more of the other. Which, and why? Again, “be in the world, not of it;” be the difference. Challenge cultural expectations, when you see a need to challenge the values they're based on. Help others to see alternatives, to think twice instead of simply blindly accepting whatever is thrown at them. Redefine priorities if you need to. Let go of certain unhelpful habits. Think about whether the way you're spending your every day now is something you can thank God for sincerely, something you can present to Him with gladness. Consider that we were made for so much more than than the endless cycle of generating and using money. Remember that our lack of peace, our lack of contentment, even our lack of enjoyment of our lives, reflects our lack of spiritual understanding of Who God is, and what it means to serve Him, to glorify Him. Be the salt and the light. Even if it means you need to sit down and think about how to live more purposefully--not exactly the activity you feel drawn to after a long day, if we're being honest...
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