Come to our Café :)

Yes it is stressful and the way out is not very easy because we are caught in a vicious cycle.
Modern life is synonymous to speed, quick changes and fast living.

How can you have stillness and peaceful silence in dynamic movement?

Return to innocence is the solution, but sadly, it seems an impossible dream.

It's so wonderful that the Gaia Team is catalyzing these meaningful conversations such as the Cafe, the Q&R, etc. I deeply appreciate, and hope lots of folks participate!!

Blessings, OM Bastet

Here in the United States, unreasonably long hours for long periods of time with little time off and no guarantee of job security is the norm for much of the work force.  If you try to create a manageable work-life balance or have family, you can easily be replaced by someone who is willing to bow to corporate culture.  This type of marketplace only benefits corporations, not people.

I was fortunate to live in England for a little over 5 years.  While there, I experienced 35-hour maximum workweeks, enjoyed minimum 25 days annual leave per year, and heard about the desire to reduce the working week even further to match European standards. 

This is not currently possible in the US because consumers – in cooperation with the corporations that fulfill their needs - would not allow it.  In order to have shorter workweeks and more time off, you need to have retail establishments open fewer hours of the day.  This then ripples off into manufacturing, construction and other industries, because if you can't buy anything after 7pm, you'll probably want to leave work before then in order to do so.  On Sundays, grocery stores are only open from noon until 4pm in the town I lived in (a suburb of London) and many other places throughout the UK.  This allows people to go home and spend time with their families and be active in their communities.

Also there is a much stronger emphasis on local connections in the UK, from having a local baker, butcher, cheese vendor and dairy rather than superstore grocery stores, to having a drink down the pub with the townsfolk as your normal entertainment.  Granted, the scale of everything in the UK is smaller because their countries are much smaller than the USA, and that makes village life more attainable.  But they also make a conscious choice to control the growth of their cities:  London is bound by a perimeter called the Green Belt, a ring of trees and open grasslands that are not allowed to be built on or developed in any way in order to preserve the countryside and slow the impact of humanity on the environment.  Being forced to use the space you have more effectively instead of assuming there will always be more is a good tactic.  Many studies have shown that cities - which have a high development density ratio - are much more energy efficient than suburbs.

Being able to work, eat, and play sustainably with family and friends without fear of losing your job would definitely contribute to easing the stress of modern life.