Lighten Up

George Santyana

Do you know how fast light travels?

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That's really fast. In one second, light can travel 7 1/2 times around the circumference of the planet!

It takes light traveling at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km per second) eight minutes to travel the 93,000,000 miles from the sun to the earth. Astronomers describe the Earth as being eight light minutes away from the sun. The moon, by contrast, is just three light seconds away from the Earth.

Astronomers measure the vast distances in space in terms of light years. A light year is the distance that light will travel in an entire year. In eight minutes it travels 93,000,000 miles. In a full year, light travels a mind boggling 5.8 trillion miles.

People who study these things believe that the Milky Way Galaxy, our neighbourhood in space, is about 100,000 light years across. That means that it would take 100,000 years for light to travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other.

If that doesn't cause your frail human mind to sputter a little, please consider the following: if you counted one number a second it would take you about fifteen minutes to count to a thousand, two weeks to count to a million, and thirty-two years to count to a billion. That's how much a billion is.

Well, the entire Milky Way galaxy is comprised of over one hundred billion stars, and is but one of several hundred billion galaxies that we know of in the Universe.

If you could imagine that the entire Milky Way was about the size of an apple, the rest of the known Universe would be about the size of North America (Canada, the USA and Mexico).

What has this got to do with stress? It has to do with perspective.

Most of us are so totally caught up with our personal "issues" - our "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"- that we often lose sight of the big picture, the cosmic perspective.

So, the next time your stomach tightens when you hear a strange sound coming from your car motor, or when your face flushes when you feel slighted by a colleague, or when you feel your blood pressure go through the roof when your teen comes home with a tattoo on the forehead -- stop. Take a few deep breaths and put things in perspective. Ask yourself: "In the total scheme of things, how important is this issue in the big picture scheme of things?"

As Dr. Robert Elliot succinctly states in his two rules for stress control: "1. Don't sweat the small stuff. 2. It's all small stuff." It really is. So lighten up and give yourself permission to enjoy your life.

Eli Bay, the founder and director of the Relaxation Response Institute in Toronto is a corporate trainer, professional speaker and host of two award-winning public television series teaching practical stress control He can be reached at elibay@elibay.com or (416) 932-2784.