"Gentlemen, excuse me. I have to attend another meeting at 3.00 p.m. and it is already 2.55 p.m. I am afraid, I wi1l have to rush."

This man, Mr. F. had to go now four miles away to another meeting. He had thought it would take him about ten minutes to reach there. On the way, however, there was a religious procession going and the whole traffic was stopped. Mr. F. was trying to wriggle through but in vain. He had an argument with a driver of another car as their cars scratched against each other Fuming and fretting, he reached his destination at 3.30 p.m.

He left this meeting at 6 p.m. and started for home as he had invited some guests at dinner. On the way, he stopped at a wine-shop and asked the shopkeeper to hurriedly give him a bottle of whiskey. As there were some other customers already waiting, naturally, it took some time for the shopkeeper to attend to him. Mr. F. got furious and said, 'Look here, you are unnecessarily wasting my precious time.' The shopkeeper did not like this remark and said, 'If you care, you can go to an. other shop.' In a huff, Mr. F. left the shop and went to another, got his bottle and reached home.

At the dinner table that night, he was relating the day's incidence to his friends. His wife interrupted him and said, 'Rush and hurry are becoming part of your life. In the morning you get up, get ready, gulp down your breakfast and move out of the house. In the even­ing, when you come home, you are tired, exhausted and not in a mood even to talk. You take food, smoke and then take out your files and work on them again. Even while you are in the house, you are fully absorbed in your official matters which I can read on your face and your eyes. You have never cared to ask how I run the household or how the children are doing. It is for days and days together that you do not talk to children. By the way, do you even know in which class are they? You seem to think, it is none of your business; you earn money, and provide for us and that is more than enough.'

Hurry and rush are the order of the day especially in the metropolitan cities. You can witness it the most acutely on the roads. Even as the light at a crossing turns from red to yellow, within less than 1/100th of a second, the cars behind yours blow their horns to tell you, 'Get on, you slow and stupid.'

Even relaxation is hurried through. For some, the next Saturday evening or Sunday is fully packed with engagements early in the week. When they go on a vacation for a week or so, they pack it up with more than half a dozen places to go, so that they have to rush from one city to another, from one train to the next. On their return from the vacation they are more tired than relaxed.

Everybody is familiar with the feeling of being keyed up from nervous stress; this process is quite comparable to raising the key of a violin by tightening the strings. The jitteriness impairs our work and functions. Our adrenals produce an excess of both the adrenaline and the corticosteroids, making us alert for "fight or flight".

Says Hans Selye, "Man can be intoxicated with his own stress hormones. I venture to say that this sort of drunkenness has caused much more harm to society than the other kind.

"We are on our guard against external intoxicants, but hormones are part of our bodies; it takes more wis­dom to recognize and overcome the foe who fights from within. In all our actions throughout the day we must consciously look for signs of being keyed up too much-and we must learn to stop in time. To watch our critical stress-level is just as important as to watch our critical quota of cocktails. More so. Intoxication by stress is sometimes unavoidable and usually insidious. You can quit alcohol, and even if you do take some, at least you can count the glasses; but it is impossible to avoid stress as long as you live and your conscious thoughts cannot gauge its alarm-signals accurately."

Forgotten Art of Relaxing

People in the cities have forgotten the art of relaxing. Sitting in a secluded place, lying down under a tree, sitting by the side of a lake or a river, watching birds or listening to their musical sounds, walking alone for long distances, have all become unfashionable. Every one wants to pack up more in 24 hours.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. You cannot go on hurrying for long without spoiling your health. Stress, high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers are the consequences. Wear and tear of the body is more when you run it at high speed than at low; the engine of the car and the human body suffer in the same way.

One can choose between working at a lower gear without trouble and for long, or at a higher gear with trouble and in constant danger of a breakdown in an essential organ, and collapse. 'Slow and steady wins the race', is not just another maxim; it is based upon the experience of many a wise man through the ages.

Working in a relaxed mood one can put in greater number of hours to work and even then feel neither fatigued nor exhausted. In between the busy schedule of work, one should occasionally interrupt work to relax.

Slowing down does not mean lessening the output. In fact, it provides more time for planning our work, and cuts down on needless activity. Whatever we do is qualitatively better and the results thereof are more advantageous.