If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.—George Burns
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I am half tempted to just fill the rest of the page with videos. That would make the morning a lot easier on me. I wouldn’t have to worry about word count or whether anyone reads past the first paragraph. The videos would be cool, too. Madcon’s Don’t Worry was a decent enough hit earlier this year. Since 1973, Stevie Wonder’s been telling us, Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing. Bob Marley assured us, Every Little Thing‘s gonna be alright. Bobby McFarrin has been trying for years to convince us to Don’t Worry, Be Happy.  All of those songs have some very good advice, and if we all took that advice we might just live to the ripe old age of 101 as did George Burns, who was possibly one of the funniest people to ever live.
We’re not terribly good at that whole not worrying thing, though, and that in of itself is cause for worry. Why? Because it’s killing us, jackass. Mr. Burns laid it out right there for you: worry, stress, hypertension. All those things result in high blood pressure and high blood pressure is the single largest contributor to death in the entire fucking world. We worry too damn much, and it’s not getting any better. According to an article this past week in The Lancet, and reported by National Public Radio (NPR), the rate of high blood pressure as the cause of death has risen from 6.4 million in 1990, to 10.4 million in 2013.
Don’t worry, we have plenty of songs that can make us happy, right? And if that doesn’t work, there’s always cat memes and cute puppy videos on the Internet to help us forget that our lifestyle choices totally suck. If that doesn’t work, we have mindless reality shows filled with mindless people who become famous for making absolutely no worthwhile contribution to the human race whatsoever. And if that doesn’t work, then hey, there are always babies: pictures of babies making funny faces, videos of babies doing funny things, and plenty of websites demonstrating the various positions from which one can make babies. Why worry? Make babies![/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Wait, no, that doesn’t work either, because then we have to worry about how we’re going to feed, clothe, and educate that baby so that they don’t grow up to be as worthless as that idiot, whomever that idiot may be. Sure, we want our kids to grow up better than us, but how is that going to happen when global wages have gone down over the past 30 years so that our buying power is now less than the same money was when our parents were diapering our shitty asses? Do we really want kids starting their adult lives with more debt than the value of the house in which they grew up? How the fuck is that supposed to be an improvement?
Personally, I think we need to eliminate politicians. Approximately 70 million adults, 1 in 3 people over the age of 21, have high blood pressure and a great deal of that comes from the fact we have this group of fucking imbeciles in Washington, D. C. who keep fucking with our lives. And it’s not so much that we mind being taxed, we are willing to pay our fair share, but those morons keep giving our money to Wall Street fat cats while our roads crumble beneath us. They spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on senseless, manufactured wars while woefully underfunding education so that maybe, just maybe, we can figure out how to stop having stupid fucking wars. Kill the politicians, and those things that make us worry all go away, right?
I wish. The bottom line is we have so many things to worry about because we keep making stupid fucking choices. We choose food that kills us. We elect politicians that screw us. We tolerate a banking system that impoverishes us. Â We work at jobs that bore us for a paycheck too small to house us. We spending too much time on the fucking Internet searching for ways to improve our life instead of actually going out and improving our life. But hey, whatever you do, DON’T WORRY! That worry stuff’ll kill ya’.
Okay, maybe one video below the break. Even I need it after that rant.[/one_half_last]
The Art Of Being Chill
I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man, but nothing winds me up more than people saying, ‘Chill out’ to me when I’m irritated! —Martin Freeman
Being chill comes easily for many people, but there are some who have turned it into an art form
Like many people my age, I have to deal with high blood pressure. Medically, there are a lot of reasons for having blood-pumping issues: our lifestyles being hectic, our diets being too high in sodium, and a general fear that we might die without having accomplished enough. There are plenty of things that would probably solve all but the worst of blood pressure problems without medication, but that would require we actually alter how we live rather dramatically. We’re not likely to do that, being the stubborn folk that we are, so the doctor gives us pills that try to force our blood pressure back down to a manageable level that won’t kill us quite so quickly.
The pills don’t always work, though. The doctor has increased the strength of my medication twice before and I’m still generating systolic and diastolic readings that are far too high to be safe. Kat keeps telling me I need to chill. She makes it sound so easy. She makes it look so easy. Just “chill.” She drinks coffee and relaxes. I drink coffee and feel the need to take a thousand new pictures. She sees something stupid in her news feed and ignores it. I see something stupid in my news feed and am ready to rip someone’s head off their shoulders. I am so very much not chill.
About a month ago, Forbes magazine published a story Finding Chill in ValparaÃso, Chile. The article contains beautiful photos full of the color and culture of this relatively small Chilean city. The author talks about his hotel with hammocks on the roof, the delicious yet inexpensive food, and stray dogs that will walk you home at night (not kidding). Everything in the article sounds so wonderful that I was almost ready to pack my bags and go, until the author discloses that, while there, he tripped on a seawall and broke his leg in two places. That’s a risk I can’t take. Scratch Chile off my travel list.
It seems obvious that I need to go somewhere to chill. Indianapolis is definitely not a chill type of city. We get uptight about almost everything around here. With the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 this year, the entire neighborhood around us is anything but chill. But with ValparaÃso off the list, where should I go?
Back in 2010, Forbes also published a list of the most relaxed cities in America. The twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul topped the list. They won because they have short commute times, get plenty of exercise, and had good insurance. Note, this survey took place before the Affordable Care Act took affect so that last detail might have changed. Looking through the other cities on the list, Milwaukee, Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, it seems to me that all those cities have experienced some significant change in the past six years. Political changes have ruined Wisconsin. Portland’s population of hipsters has exploded. Seattle has become one of the most expensive cities in the country. Denver won a Super Bowl. San Jose’s Silicon Valley has experienced a lot of employment upheaval while real estate prices soared. Not seeing a number of benefits there.
Music is supposed to help people chill, right? According to the British Academy of Sound Therapy, the song Weightless is the best choice to help people chill. In fact, the song is apparently so effective one some people that the scientists involved in the study recommend that one not drive while listening to the piece. The song, which was specifically composed for this study. starts at 60 beats per minute and gradually slows to 50. I tried listening. I made it about 30 seconds before wanting to shoot something. Weightless has no freaking melody! It’s just electronic noise with carefully constructed pulsing.
From what I can tell, if one is going to master the art of being chill, they need to successfully do the following:
Anyone who can successfully do those things can master the art of being chill.
I’m probably going to die.
Share this:
Like this: