Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal: Bringing Yesterday's Sane Wisdom into Today's Insane World - Couverture souple

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Edgar Allan Poe and Cousin Ignatz
On individuality and our culture of self-improvement

I TOOK A TRIP RECENTLY to Los Angeles to give a corporate presentation, and the company I was speaking to put me up in one of the hip, trendy hotels in town. It's one of those places that is so hot, there's not even a sign outside to identify it. So if you're driving along Sunset Boulevard looking for it, you'd better know where you're going before you get there. I guess the idea is that if you're cool enough to stay there, you'll know where it is, and if not, it's the Days Inn for you. How's that for a warm welcoming attitude to start things off right?

Despite that, it's actually quite a nice hotel and has a fantastic restaurant and the staff found me pretty funny and entertaining to have around. They all walked around acting as if they barely noticed when a Sophia Loren clone checked in--but I could tell that it was all an act. The staff's disaffected and elitist attitude was part of what the hotel was selling. But I wouldn't buy it. I tried desperately to make them see the scene as I did: as a Fellini rerun. I'd make funny bored faces at them and grab my head with mock dismay and say things like, "Oh, God, no! Not another sunny day," or look disdainfully at a magnificent plate of calamari fritti and say, "How dull to have to eat like this day in and day out."

I think another reason they liked me is that just about every other guest I saw come and go in the lobby of that hotel looked and acted exactly the same. It was a little scary, as if I was watching a year 2000 version of The Stepford Wives. Everyone wore black t-shirts with black-framed narrow sunglasses and a white linen jacket and talked into a cell phone and carried a black leather shoulder bag out of which popped a bottle of mineral water. They all looked and acted as if this was the most boring place they'd ever been, and that they were totally unimpressed with the surroundings and the other people. Not a single eye looked around the room as if it were interested in what might be there, not a single voice said nice things to the staff, like "we're glad to be here!" Or "what a nice place you have here!" No, everyone was disinterested in everyone else and made it clear that they were so jaded that being in this lovely hotel meant nothing to them.

I guess being bored to tears has become a status symbol.

For me, the whole experience was stifling! The vitality, the energy, the joy, was totally missing. I was surrounded by people whose body language and temperament were like zombies, and the way they dressed was so incredibly dull that they might as well have been wearing a school uniform from 1957. No one looked eccentric, unusual, or interesting. Rather than standing out as individuals, they disappeared as if part of a huge ant farm.

This phenomenon worries me, and I think it's something that can be seen across our entire culture. We're becoming a very bland, vanilla society in which "fitting in" is critically important to people.

It makes sense, of course, given the mass media and constant marketing that is now such an inherent part of our society. After all, we are all constantly presented with the same models of perfection. We all look at photos of the same beautiful people in magazines, we all watch the same talking heads on television, we all go to see movies starring the same movie stars with the same disaffected personas. We all shop in malls that are so cookie-cutter that we can't tell if we're in our own town or in Outer Mongolia. We all listen to the same talk-show hosts and the same radio shows, so we're all constantly being given the same advice.

So before you know it, everybody wants the same clothes and strives to look like a model for J. Crew or Banana Republic or the Gap. Everybody goes to the same exercise classes fighting for the same body fat percentage. Everybody wants the same haircut and the same bone structure and the same nose. Everybody strives to have the same psychologically even temperament and the same balance of aggressiveness, empathy, cynicism and responsibility.

Social critic Bill McKibben states that "Boomers are the first generation born into the TV world--and thus conceived in the full-blown consumer society that has gotten more intense with every year. They're the first generation, for instance, to have watched something like 400,000 television commercials before age 20." What this leads to is a world in which we all are trying to fit a very narrow model of what's deemed by the media as acceptable in our society. And what's "in" is someone who is fit with washboard abs, who is well groomed, who wears clothes that look like they come from a chain store with wood paneling (or who may have a tattoo and a pierced navel to be edgy and hip, which is also "in"), who earns a respectable amount of money, who lives in a home in an upscale neighborhood, who has an even temper, who isn't in any way depressed or obsessive or manic or eccentric, who drives the proper car (or sport-utility vehicle) and who smells like something from the Body Shop.

Anybody who doesn't fit within maybe a narrow 10 percent range of what the society considers "normal" today is seen as some sort of deviant.

Do you doubt that we're pressured to "fit in?" Think for a minute about the massive industry today devoted to "self help."

There seems to be no limit to the stuff that people will write books about. Something like three thousand new self-help books get published every year. Who would have guessed that we could have so many things wrong with us? The subjects just get more and more narrow: books for adults with depression. Books for women on running with the wolves. Books for people with borderline personality disorder. I really saw a book the other day that promised to cure people of attention deficit disorder. Excuse me, but how are you going to get someone who has attention deficit disorder to SIT STILL LONG ENOUGH TO READ A BOOK?

The issue for me is this: these books, and the other media that produce endless self-help material--the magazines and talk shows and websites and newspaper columns--all contribute to a world in which we are constantly assaulted with the message that we have to fit a perfect mold, or else we're screwed up. How could people not feel this way? These days, if you read a magazine or watch television or look at bookstore shelves or read the newspapers, you can be damn sure you'll find some malady being discussed that will sound a little bit like something that affects you.

Did you have a second piece of toast with breakfast today? You can be sure that there's a radio talk show that will make you wonder if maybe you have an eating disorder. Have you been a little moody, or could you possibly have that bipolar disorder you read about in the Times? Did you stay up late last night surfing interesting sites on the Internet? Was it because you were engaged and excited and having fun, or is it that you're in danger of becoming a cyberaddict like that woman on the Today show?

And, likewise, as you peruse the media chances are (unless you're very lucky) that virtually no one you see in the pages of magazines or on television looks like you. They're all perfectly chiseled and fit and have big bright eyes and perfectly formed white teeth and asses the size of two ripe little peaches.

All of this contributes to a society in which, every minute of the day, we all walk around feeling as if we're just not good enough. And the first thing to go is our individuality.

Our society is so over-analyzed that every single thing we do--including the elements of our personalities that make us interesting, complex, complete human beings--has become fodder for self-help journalism and a reason for us to feel self-conscious and imperfect.

If you allowed it, the self-help media and marketers would convince you that just about every aspect of your physical and psychological self could be improved if you only worked at it. Didn't you know? There's not a thing about you that is fine just the way it is, from your temperament to your hair color to the sound of your voice to the size of your external organs. If you just read another book, or bought another product, or consulted with another expert, you could be just that one step closer to being a perfect human specimen. People are actually having elective surgery to change the shape of their sexual organs: a little bigger here, a little tighter there. Imagine! Taking a knife to that thing by choice. If that's not insane, what is?

Listen, it's exciting to engage in the process of self-discovery and self-improvement. But I worry that we've taken the journey to a place of self-obsession, where our attempts to evolve have made us dissolve into people who can never be at peace with ourselves.

How can we feel good about ourselves when a walk through the bookstore insists we:

Have thin thighs in thirty days.

Cure yourself of your toxic upbringing.

Attain the habits of highly successful people.

Awaken the giant within.

Make the most of your money.

Eat to win.

Heal your inner child.

Overcome overeating.

Take control of panic attacks.

Think like Leonardo da Vinci.

Learn Optimism.

Make your dreams come true.

Argue and win every time.

Have the courage to be rich.

Develop a superpower memory.

Improve your sense of direction and never get lost again!

Tap the wisdom and power of your heart's energy.

Find self-esteem in ten days.

Simplify your life.

Win the war within yourself.

Improve your emotional intelligence.

Dress for success.

Excavate your authentic self.

Discover the art of doing nothing.

Avoid the ten stupid things women do to mess up their lives.

I look at all those books and want to jump out the window. Who the hell could...

For most of us, life has become such a pressure cooker of unrealistic expectations, information overload, relentless marketing, and workaholism that we spend our days stressed out over being stressed out. Guided by the timeless wisdom of her grandmother Francesca, renowned stress coach and humorist Loretta LaRoche makes us see the wisdom of a more civilized time, when no one carried a cell phone during a peaceful walk on the beach.

In Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal, Loretta takes an honest and hilarious look at the gizmos, self-help regimens, talking heads, comfort products, nutrition plans, and sexual freedoms that we have all come to believe will make our lives better. She shows us that in many ways, they’re filling our lives with more stress and insanity and keeping us isolated from the thing that matters most in any healthy life: real human connection. With Loretta’s contemporary wit and a hearty dose of Francesca's old-world wisdom, Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal is a breath of fresh air for everyone who's suffocating in our techno-crazed, germ-phobic, "go-go-go" world.