A life of stress?

It's saturday afternoon, a fairly nice day outside for England, and I find myself sitting in front of the computer trying and failing to understand and write my maths coursework. This year I've tried hard not to get myself stressed over school work; I mean, what's the point of it? Really? I enjoy learning, it's true. But learning is something we do naturally, do we really need to be forced into it? Does this coursework really mean anything? It's dull and it's pointless in every sense of the word. I'm not demonstrating any understanding in it at all. It's one of those paint by numbers things; we're given the mark scheme with a breakdown of exactly where every mark comes from. The last peice we did like this I got 17/18. Where did I drop the mark? Well I found an unusual, novel demonstration of a point instead of sticking to the expected demonstration. Exams in England are such rubbish.

From such a young age it's drilled into us that to be anything, anything at all, we have to study. Intelligence is power it seems. And I suppose that's true. It's the clever people who become "successful" and with success comes influence. But how many "successful" people do you see who are truely happy? Not many I bet. Sure, there's a lot to be said for job satisfaction but I honestly think that a job is what you make of it. I work part time in a small independent supermarket. It's not the most challenging of jobs and it's very repeptitive, but I look forward to going and not just because I know I'm going to be paid.

My point really is that it's easy to get stressed out by everything you feel you should do but that's not the only way to live. Often people who lead stressful lives are striving towards something; they want the fleeting happiness that they get from feeling successful, from feeling admired and from feeling useful. But sometimes the stress just isn't worth it. I've said before that it's my belief that happiness is a choice and I suppose this is what I was talking about. You can get yourself stressed out or you can enjoy the ride - after all, we only live once. When you're old and grey and you look back over your time on this earth will you remember stress? Or will you be the person with the interesting stories of getting into scrapes and living as full a life as you could muster?