The Pace of Life

I am feeling exhausted.  

Everybody is exhausted, not just working women with children. We're all run ragged by a 24/7 society that never sleeps.

We have an inability to switch off and relax, either because of internal anxieties or those placed upon us by work, by society or by all of these things. The new technological age that was supposed to bring us freedom by allowing us greater flexibility is, in fact, slowly killing us.

Even the flexibility to work at home doesn't really make life any less exhausting.
At the end of the working week, we have trouble sleeping. Sex is off the agenda, because we're all too tired for that.

Everybody is so tired, working late, travelling, everyone has more pressures, everyone seems to worry about things.  In general, it's as if people cannot talk about being exhausted because they feel they are failing and fear that people will witness this failing.  People seem to be terrified that if they don't just carry on they might be sacked.  No longer do we have jobs for life and if people take time out to recover, someone else will just come along and jump in their shoes.  I believe that not seeing enough of friends and family is about to threaten our health. 

I believe exhaustion is the new taboo, it's only spoke about behind closed doors and in private but when you look every man for himself climate nobody wants their boss it work colleagues to believe they cannot cope especially when people have families and mortgages to pay for.  

Life has not always been this way, it never had the same kind of pervasive, life sapping exhaustion that is common place now.  During the war, people seemed to come together more, there always seemed in films and books to be a sense of the problems and dangers being overcome together.  Today, people do not stick together like this, threats like bombings are far less but the emotional situations we are in during today's society seem ten times worse. 

When the Iron Lady said "There is no Society", I believe she meant that the Western World had totally lost it's Social Identity.  We have had positive changes and our lives are easier to the fact that we all eat better, we earn more money, we have more opportunities and some are healthier.  

When Mrs Thatcher famously said, "There is no society", she was perhaps responding to the notion that the population of the Western world has lost its social identity. We eat better, earn more, have more opportunities and some of us are healthier but the satisfaction of life has declined, many are depressed and many are ill with functional illnesses such as constant tiredness, the inability to sleep, anxiety that makes you ill, these are all caused by the body's failure to adapt to social change. We have the ability now to travel to the other side of the world in a day, we can communicate with anyone within seconds. Modern technology has changed our lives.

Clearly not everybody who is exhausted is pursuing the capitalist dream of a big house, foreign holidays, nannies and big cars, but perhaps most of us have just lost a sense of control, of seeing how even small changes might make a difference.

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