“I doubt whether modern man
experiences more distress
than his ancestors,” Selye
once said. “It’s not that people
suffer more stress today. It’s
just that they think they do.”solution. Stress research would go far beyond Selye’s
own discoveries (and he would, posthumously, draw
criticism for his relationship with the tobacco indus-
try), but he is still considered a towering figure.
And Selye’s research also uncovered something
that may surprise—or perhaps comfort—the stressed
among us, and that’s a takeaway that has largely en-
dured even as research on the subject has evolved.
Though we use the term “stress” almost exclusively
in a negative sense, his 1956 book, The Stress of Life,
and its 1974 follow-up, Stress Without Distress, made
the case that while stress could shorten our lives and
decrease their quality, not only was it impossible to
live without stress but you wouldn’t want to anyway.
“Crossing a busy intersection, exposure to a draft,
or even sheer joy are enough to activate the body’s
stress mechanism to some extent,” he wrote. “Stress
is not even necessarily bad for you; it is also the spice
of life, for any emotion, any activity causes stress.
But, of course, your system must be prepared to take
it.” Life, he added, “is largely a process of adaptation
to the circumstances in which we exist.”
So how to strike the right balance? Selye, who
died in 1982, offered this advice: “Fight always for
the highest attainable aim, but never put up resis-
tance in vain.” •