Humans are the animals that stress about stress

I often wonder if humans would be better off living simpler lives. Not just the kind of simple life we would lead if we had never invented television or the combustion engine, but rather the kind without medicine or the wheel.

What would it be like if we accepted that people have to die, and stopped using every little microbe as a method of staving of the inevitable encroachment of the Grim Reaper.

What would things be like if we had just our own two feet to get around.

I’ve spent some time at zoos watching monkeys play around, and they seem perfectly content even in a cage.

They also like to throw feces, but different strokes for different species, right?

There are some great things about being a monkey, you get a healthy mostly fruit diet, no one tells you where you can and can’t poop and your friends are only too willing to help you out when you’re infested with nits.

Somehow, I feel like monkeys have less stress than us sapiens. They don’t have jobs, marriages or mortgages. They can almost always find a babysitter even at the last minute.

I’ll bet that there isn’t a single monkey (other than those used to test medication) that has ever developed an ulcer.

I read a study about warring factions of chimps in the wild once, but that’s nothing compared to humans.

The very tool using skills that set us apart from our primate bretheren are our downfall as we constantly turn our genius against each other.

Even when our brains aren’t working to develop more deadly methods of species suicide, we’re developing deadly means of amusement.

Car racing, bungee jumping and lawn darts come immediately to mind, to say nothing of drugs or pretty much anything stamped with ‘product of China.’

Yet another bonus that is readily apparent anytime a person turns on the TV during an election year is that animals do not have politics, and hence no politicians.

In the animal kingdom there are leaders who survive based on their relative merits, and keep position only as long as they can remain fit and strong.

We humans who dwell in the region known as the United States like to pretend we have a similar system, but even when things start to fail, our elected officials continue along with a 70 percent incumbency rate.

Animals also don’t have to worry about the trading of money for goods and services. Life is simple for them. Find food or starve. Find water or dehydrate and die.

As the average life expectancy pushes its way past the 70 year mark, why does no one seem to be asking the fundamental question of ‘how long is long enough?’

In the quick scurry I’ve made though the first couple decades of my life, I haven’t really found a lot of things that make me think 10 extra years are worth a lot of joint pain, daily medication rituals and expensive surgery.

Of course you might be in a different position right now, and I could be as well by the time I reach 60 years old.

It seems sometimes that we really do believe that life is all about buying a bigger house or getting that next $300 bonus from work.

What is life about you ask?

I don’t really know, but I like to think it’s about finding the answer to that question.