An illness or an excuse?

How many times have you heard someone say ‘I am so stressed’? I say it at least ten times a day. I said it to myself when the books editor of this magazine asked if I might turn this review around in two days flat instead of taking the usual, more leisurely week or so to file my thoughts. Which is ironic because the book I’m reviewing is about the myth of stress. Angela Patmore, having spent a good 20 years researching the uses and abuses of the S-word, arrives at the conclusion that it is such an ill-defined and contentious category as to be meaningless, and argues that our rush to depict overwork or personal trial and tribulation as the harbinger of a sometimes crippling ‘stress’ threatens to turn out a generation of saps.

Just what is stress? A sickness? A syndrome? It might be the word we all reach for when what we mean to say is ‘I’m busy’ or ‘I’m having a hard time’ or ‘I have a book review to write’, but most of us, I’m willing to wager, would struggle to define it.