Stress for Unsuccess

My cat is psycho. Ever since another cat, named George, has been around our house lately, we've been watching this showdown between the two. Before George, according to Kenzie, the household's reliable source for news on the most irrelevant stories, our own cat was fat and lazy, while George was skinny and frail. Now the roles have been reversed, with our cat losing weight as fast as an anorexic while George is living the high life of being petted and fed by us. We should be treating both the same, but we have to leave one cat out while the other cat stays in, or else both would fight to the death. Problem is, our own cat was psycho before George came along, and today she's on a totally different level of psycho that she should be put in the animal mental hospital. The hair on her back is always standing up as if I just rubbed a balloon on her and kept the balloon above her back. She has that one look in her eyes, where she thinks the world's out to get her. It's insane, and she's gonna die soon.

Who cares about my cat, though? Why talk about my cat's story, when I don't even care about my own cat when I should?

It's the perfect example of stress ruining someone's life.

In today's society, everyone has the exact same mentality as Ricky Bobby. "If you ain't first, you're last." So, what do you have to do in order to become number one? You have to do everything and anything you can in order to be at the top, which might mean taking on extra jobs and responsibilities in order to reach their goal. During this process, any reasonable person would become overwhelmed with the amount of work that one has to do in order to achieve perfection in our daily lives.

But what are some of the reasons why we strive for perfection, for the number one spot? Is it for the recognition? The extra spending money on shoes? Or for the simple satisfaction of putting in all that hard work to become number one and finally being rewarded for it?

For most, it's for the fame and money. It was for me for most of my life since that's what television does to you. Commercials always told me, "If you work hard, you can be on the cover of Wheaties, just like so-and-so mega-athlete." Just that inspiration, that dream of becoming the best athlete in the history of the universe had stuck with me all my life. If all I do is work hard (and eat my peas), I can become just like Michael Jordan? Well, in my little 7-year-old mind, that was easy. So for my entire life, I've been working hard in sports just to be recognized by the community and my peers. It was frustrating, obviously, since I was looking for satisfaction from other people when my own family was already proud of what I had accomplished. It was frustrating to be second, third, or even fifth at everything I did. Nothing was ever good enough, so I would put unnecessary stress upon myself and put myself down for the simplest accomplishments.

Then I went to work at a summer camp. My goodness did that change me. Who cares what place we're in? If we work hard, no matter if you were first or last, you tried your hardest and that's all you can ask for. My dad had told me that my entire life, but I never really listened to the message he was trying to convey to me until I went to camp. People were happy with themselves even though they knew they weren't perfect. It's alright to be decent, since we will all be better off in the future if we just stop worrying about everything and start focusing on one thing; our place in heaven. God will find us a place up there, whether we're in first or last since it just doesn't really matter. People believe that if they don't reach their goals, they're a failure. Everything they had just worked for in their life was a waste of time.

This is where we have to be careful not to cross that line between laziness and over-working ourselves. There have been a number of people who have wasted their talents by working hard on their beer belly, working hard on becoming the number one drug dealer in the history of forever, or working hard at flipping burgers. There have also been people who have given up when the times become rough, when they're not the best at something anymore. Where's the middle, where we work hard but not so hard that we become stressed out and overwhelmed?

For me, when I finally reach that point, that'll be when I have a family, a roof over me, food provided, and in fairly good health. Some people miss out on this and strive to have bigger and better accessories for their lives, but in the end it won't matter. So hopefully I don't become like everyone else and get caught in the mindset of wanting more than I need.

If I do, and future Andrew if you're reading this, change your dumb ways, you filthy idiot!