MONEY MAKES THE WORLD OF STRESS KEEP GOING 'ROUND!

or

Money, Stress and the BIG Lie: Confessions of a Cinderella

Stress has been a 'buzz-word' for so long that we don't even want to hear about it anymore! We have become so inured to it, that we actually believe that it doesn't much affect us anymore, or cost us anything, because we've really learned to "cope" with it. After all, we get away, take anti-depressants, attend more than the average number of 'happy hours', take "recreational 'soft' drugs"??? Does that INCLUDE or EXCLUDE all of the doctor-prescribed capsules that numb us from the moment to moment experiences of our bumpy earthly existence?

I guess I just woke up today feeling spunky. Sometimes the absurdity of this commercialized,

Consumerism-based society just looms, and one simply has to belly-laugh, or at least expose all that is seemingly real as nothing more than a smoke screen. It's all made up out of nothing to pretend it is something--and we buy, and buy, and buy it, thinking we are making a purchase. Having been in the national advertising field for over 15 years, I was definitely on the leading edge of smoke-screen seduction through television commercial advertising until 'new and improved' ran out of gas. I finally could no longer read any more scripts filled with this mush, and I could no longer let myself be used to sell things that had no value at all. I quit being a Madison Ave baby!

But we all pay. We attend retreats, jump off of tall telephone poles belted to get the "team spirit back in the executive ranks", go on dangerous wilderness adventures, ride the wild rapids, do "paint war" and share our latest, greatest , fast-acting drug for being able to handle all the pressures of modern life---being the perfect parent, corporate clone,, community member, church go-er, and sports enthusiast on the block. Maybe we should just try that Chinese herb, or the latest 'vitamin with 'zip' on the market. We will spend anything to stay young, fit, high, and beautiful and look as if nothing bothers us---ever. Stress, obviously has taken to being a "wolf in sheep's clothing" in the near-millennium 90's. The seduction game has just gotten more subtle and we are super skeptical, we even now believe it sounds too good to be true, it probably is--it's all fear!

So, we find entertainment bigger and better than last week's experiences, have 'dangerous liaisons' and of course become mal-illumined, mal-nutritioned, mal-compassionate, mal-relational, mal-awake beings walking through this life in a fog. We do the best we can to ignore it (this stressful world) all together by slapping a distortion over our brain---and continuously over-spend for the latest, greatest, accessory-correct pairs of glasses, contacts, RX sunglasses. Some of us that can go really fast and high-end, slap thousands of dollars down to have our eyes "cut", "peeled", "shaved", "braced", or "corneal-ringed" to try to restore nature with unnatural solutions, and relieve the stress of how we see and experience our world. Society doesn't tell us the truth about the downside of quick fix, or the long-term effects are often buried in less-than-profitable or less-than-best-results studies and we've accepted half-truths as facts.

In our speedy life, and our ignorance, we opt for the quick fix, not only glasses as a way in improve our vision, (doesn't it seem odd to purchase a distorted disc to see clearly?) but we are also slicing, shaving, and cutting into healthy eyes! A Band-Aid approach for the surface, using advanced tricks of optics--not having any effect on the "cause" of the visual problem. We have just used a costly optical trick. (No one ever bothered to ask us what was wrong inside when we couldn't see.)

What can we say, advertising sells, white coats still make us nervous, and we've become impatient as a nation, in every area of our fast-paced lives.

Often in making these quick choices, no stress has been eliminated, and often, or eventually, we're back in glasses again, just for a different visual field this time. Of course, these procedures always require signing away any responsibility for mishap! Is it worth it in the long run? Bright idea, "gee, I think I'll go get another pair of stronger glasses as my eyesight keeps getting worse, and I want those $500+ designer frames this time, too". Wouldn't it be great if glasses, also known as 'corrective lenses", came with a guarantee that said, "if your vision gets worse from wearing these, you get your money back? "

We are not honorably told in our culture that most all our 'ills' are simply a body-mind-spirit-in- overwhelm throwing up all kinds of 'red flags' to try to get our attention. We respond by seeking and finding the best anesthetizing solution for the quick fix! We have been hypnotized to believe that if we are still suffering from stress, we obviously haven't found the best 'cure' or solution and 'shame on us'! After all, no one would make money if we were told that there were natural solutions to the stresses of this life---and we have too often decided that 'fast is better'! We don't often think of the downside of the 'quick fix' syndrome. If we do notice it--we just keep quiet, we can't afford (afford?) to rock the boat of our immediate circle of influence. Dump the boat!

This is the experience that most of us are torn between with advertising touting, tugging, "fibbing", and enticing us to "follow me", this will solve your life, save your life, and promise to make your life Eternally Happy. Quarantined. The more of our 'friends' we see lining up, the more we convince ourselves that what "they say" must certainly BE true. Another layer of blinders go on, another strata of disease, discontent, and disillusionment cover our oozing-with-suffering lifestyles. Bleak Right?

Does any of this sound like it fits your foot, Cinderella? I have bought it all, tried it all, paid and paid for it all, many times over. One day I blew up the boat, started swimming upstream, saying howdy all my fellow travelers going in the direction I had once gone as a lifestyle, and slowly began to uncover my own insight, heart, and health--naturally,

I became "unconventional" I found out that my vision problems were from mental eyestrain and it could be reversed. Absurd? Have you tried it? It works by relaxing the visual system by re-educating our stress-out system to the natural way it already knows inherently. Bah, humbug, you say. Have you explored all the natural ways available to you in many modalities of health and healing ---stemming from all forms of realigning and balancing? Or are you reading this as just another slight-of-hand notion because we have all become so jaded, and exhausted at being tricked in our lives?

I got rid of my glasses with the Bates Method, stopped stopping up my body with the four food groups: salt, sugar, fat, and starch, (I am pretty good with this one now), got my heart totally involved with my life, and stopped giving away my money on 'castles in someone else's air", and bank account. It can be a long way back, I am not perfect, but I am happier, healthier, and freer. More important to me, I stopped being an asleep part of the problem, and at least turned around toward being part of the less-hypnotized solution. It's embarrassing to admit how far astray I wandered. At least I am 'not dead yet", as a teacher once told me, "if I did it, I can undo it:'" So, I can still wake up more and more!

PS the shoes offered by the Prince Charming of our Society with never fit me again! Ouch!

In honor of the humor of our fumbling around, give something unorthodox a try--after all if you "keep doing the same thing, you keep getting the same results" (author unknown).

PSS My mother does not understand my resume anymore.

Jeannie Fitzsimmons, Social Misfit

Holistic Practitioner, the Dr. Bates Method of Natural Vision Improvement

Light and Color Balancing Program Through the Eyes

Transformation Energetic Healing with Lovestream, Radiant Touch, and Drisana

Vibrational Healing through Music-Brain Mind tonal balancing

Published Composer, Producer/Recording Artist, and performance artist of no words music.