Post by ccgandrt on Jan 3, 2007 0:52:45 GMT -5
Exporting Stress...
December 23rd, 2006 11:55PM Pacific US Time
Image Credit: www.ats.agr.gc.ca/latin/images/e3157016.gif
When I saw an article on CNN.com www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/20/stress.ap.poll.ap/index.html
about stress on human beings, I was automatically interested because of having a history of being a type "A" personality. That's the impatient, with time urgency, lay awake at night and can't turn off personality.
I was working in Mexico a full time job; owning your own business. Twelve hour days were the norm, plus I was a gourmet cook, landscaping gardner, doing some writing, sculptures in my free time.
My energy could have been enough to run three humans on just the vapor. I was normal; everyone else was lazy. I had good work ethics; the Mexicans were cheats. I was punctual; Mexicans had their famous word "ahorrita" and hand signal of their thumb and index fingers separated by a tiny amount of air. I found that "tiny bit" signal for USA people would mean just a second and for Mexicans it would mean anything from a minute to a couple weeks later, sometimes never!
My favorite story on timeliness was from a mother of two children & how she had ordered a rocking crib to be built by the local carpenter. She had asked it to built before child number three came and he agreed orally to complete the work. She explained to me that number three came and number four came also by the time the carpenter finished the work. Believe me, she had been after him any chance she could, but she got the "ahorrita sign."
However, I now find out that my belief has been somewhat wrong all this time.
Their laid back attitude is part of their culture. Not the best attitude for a developing country, nor for the NAFTA imperialist USA shipped down south. But if a country is not bothering anyone else in the world, does it need changing? Does every country in the world have to suffer migraines or ulcers?
It is obvious to me now that if a culture which is thousands of years old and did not need the word "stress" in it's vocabulary until the USA began pushing Democracy around the world, doesn't it mean something important? Perhaps stressing over money, possessions and Capitalism with democracy is not healthy? Might it be possible that I carried the "E-stress" with me to Mexico, then adapted to their ways and returned to a more crazy lifestyle than I had left?
I read now the easier going Mexicans are stressing over money or finances. I hear where they are unable to have their customary Posadas, the breaking of the Pinatas, at Christmas time because they cannot afford it, even when trying to split the costs with other neighbors on the block!
I'm sorry if I offend anyone with this, my first column; however with who's authority, with what right does the United States of America have to spread it's diseases around the world? With the ignorance they have been breeding and with their imperialist arrogance; they have ruined the only earth we have to live on!
Exporting 'stress' might become a number one industry for the USA, that is of course if California's marijuana crop fails this year as number one dollar export.
Corey Ciofalo is a Political New Columnist and long time contributor for Powers&Morrison.com