A friend of mine recently spent some €500 on medicine caused by a stress-induced illness.
Of course, it took a long line of doctors and multiple visits to clinics for the cause to be determined: he went through a colourful array of diagnoses and had to endure the side effects of all sorts of medicines before, finally, one wise doctor asked him: “Have you been through a particularly stressful time?”
At the resounding answer, the doctor sighed and said: “There you go, that’s your problem to your physical ailments.”
My friend went home, binned all the medicine, switched off his mobile phone and went on a sun and sea holiday. He came back a new, healthy man.
Stress is a word bandied about like there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes I think we use it in our conversations instead of a comma. What’s odd is that I don’t recall my parents or my uncles or aunts ever using it when you we were young. We had inkwiet (trouble) or ġratilna biċċa (something big), but never stress.
I suppose it’s the result of leading insanely hectic lifestyles. We’re so busy these days that we dive with our mobile phone on our laps “just in case” we receive an “urgent text” (guilty as charged).
But is there a need for our lives to be like this, I wonder? Or are we all just playing a part of an unbreakable pattern?
Recently, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, one of the two richest men in the world, spoke at a conference in Paraguay and proposed a three-day week. “We would have more time to relax, for quality of life,” said the phone network mogul. He joined geek tycoon Larry Page of Google, who last week proposed the more modest but still attractive four-day week. Hear, hear.
Only France seems to get the hint. Meanwhile, we have to make do with alternatives. I’ve recently sought refuge in a charming dwelling with no television, lots of books on shelves and a garden full of tweeting birds.
It’s when you cut off the grid like this that you realise that there’s only one word for living a stressful life: it’s pointless. More so, because before you know it, you’re sick.
• Would Kate Middleton be stressed about her first engagement abroad alone, I wonder? Oh, go on admit it, the fact that she’s coming to Malta in September, must have at one point or other, popped up in your conversation.
Maltese royalists scolded us online for calling her Kate: “Stop that. She is Her Royal Highness!” Others expressed “utter disappointment” because for such an important occasion they “would have expected” Prince Charles to turn up.
We’re so busy that we dive with our mobile phone on our laps ‘just in case’ we receive an ‘urgent text’
“Prince Charles?!” said a British expat dear friend of mine. “Goodness me, he’s done his part now.”
The thing is, the visit has caused a frisson of excitement out there. A friend with a one-year-old toddler suggested that maybe she should offer her daughter as a playmate.
“Imagine they’ll stay friends and then they fall in love”.
Another friend mused how he could be her escort, seeing as there won’t be Prince William. My sister, who’s getting married the day of the visit, mulled sending her an invite to the wedding.
Our fairytale spinning got slightly sidetracked with the news that our Prime Minister gave baby George a silver breakfast set for his quċċija. We all imagined the plate being hurled off the highchair and little George banging the silver mug wailing for milk.
No, said another friend, royal babies don’t do that. “He’ll just say: ‘Mother could I ask for some more milk, in this gracious cup courtesy of the Maltese nation?’”
• Matt Rudd, my favourite journalist at the Sunday Times of London, wrote a few weeks ago that he spent almost every minute of the past 30 years searching tirelessly for someone who likes the green fruit Pastilles. Which happens to be exactly what I’ve been doing all my life.
“Nobody likes the green ones,” he wrote. “Nobody at all”. I nodded, awash with great relief as I read, for I too, have never met anyone – not a single tiny person – who loves green Pastilles.
He wrote to Rowntree, the producing company, asking them why don’t they just get rid of them. They said: “You are quite right that the red and black are the most preferred flavours – our own consumer research confirms your hypothesis. But it is actually the yellow that is the least preferred overall. Green is the most polarising: people either love it or hate it.”
In a nutshell, Rowntree would not even contemplate axing the green ones. It’s also pointless complaining that there’s always more green Pastilles than reds in the packet, for Rowntree solemnly declares that the makeup of the pack “is completely random”. You’re obviously unlucky,” they told Rudd.
Huh. That makes the two of us.
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Twitter: @Krischetcuti