1 In the 90s, the big status symbol was to be “stressed.”
“How’s it going?” you’d ask someone, and they’d say, “Dude, I’m so stressed,” and then they’s list all of the “stressors” in their life: papers to write, girlfriends to break up with, room-mates to clean up after. You were supposed to shake your head in commiseration, and then say something like, “You think you’re stressed? Check this out.” And then you’d list all of your stressors. (Personally, however, I always preferred to pretend that they meant “I’m so stressed” in a positive sense. “Right on!” I’d usually reply.)
This decade, however, isn’t about stress–it’s about being busy (or maybe it’s about both, and the stress is just assumed). Ask someone how they’re doing these days, and they’re likely to whip out their Blackberry and recite that day’s schedule: “I’ve got the dentist at noon, the accountant at one, two music lessons, a soccer practice and a pedicure. Then I have to go to the grocery store, because we are completely out of food…”
The only difference that I can see between the 90s version and this one is that, in the 90s, at least we didn’t feel bad about it: we were proud of our stress. It made us seem important. It made us seem busy. Nowadays, however, we actually are busy, and we feel guilty about it. Especially when that busyness involves our children.
This is because, supposedly, being too busy is one of the symptoms of “Nature Deficit Disorder,” the condition whereby the modern child–due to their hectic, over-scheduled lives–have become cut off from the natural world. I can see their point: my kids do spend a lot less time out wandering the woods then I did when I was their age (or rather, in my case, wandering the fields–I grew up in an agricultural community). And they do have a lot more scheduled activities then I did when I was a child–between the music lessons, soccer practice, Cub Scouts and whatnot (I’m sure I’m forgetting something), they are probably five times as busy as I was at their age.
And yes, I could see how this could be misinterpreted as a bad thing–how it paints a picture of an overly ambitious mom shuttling her kids from one activity to the next, the kids in question looking longingly over their shoulders at the beckoning woods as they are forced, yet again, into the back of the minivan. But, the thing is, it’s not like that: given the chance, my kids would fill their schedule with even more activities–there would be horseback riding lessons, karate, and Japanese language classes on top of everything else, with a barely a break in the middle for a quick playdate and then off we’d go again.
Some people say that this is because kids these days have shorter attention spans, and therefore need to switch from activity to activity like a remote spinning through 600 channels. Maybe. But maybe it’s also because it’s kind of fun to be busy.
I know that I’m supposed to feel bad about all of the activities; I’m supposed to be wringing my hands in despair at the fact that every single waking minute of my children’s lives is crammed full, but somehow, I just can’t. Who knows? Maybe my anxiety plate is just so full already that I don’t have room for anything else. I mean, really: I’m supposed to worry about falling school test scores, the economy, swine flu, and nature deficit disorder? Really?
Of course, maybe this is all just practice for the next decade–the “worry” decade. That makes sense; a few years from now I’ll probably ask somebody “How’s it going?” and, in the most pained way possible, they’ll answer me, “Dude, I’m so worried.” To which, hopefully, I’ll be able to respond: “Right on.”