Stress is a relative term.
Keith Miller, a legend of Australian cricket in the post WWII period, never showed any nerves before a big match. A journalist once asked why he never felt any stress. "This is not stress," he said. "Cricket is only a game. Stress is having a Messerschmidt on your tail at 12,000 feet."
In some parts of the modern world stress is as high as it was at any time in history. How would you like to be living in Syria, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan? How would you feel about ISIS attacking your town? Would you feel stress if you were a woman living in an Islamic theocracy? Or a gay living in the American Bible belt?
For most of us who live in civilised countries, modern stress is only a shadow of the trauma that was an everyday fact of life for our ancestors.
THESE are the good old days.
