Are we having enough stress levels in our life?

I think it was late midnight. The room was completely dark. I don't know whether power is gone. I could not understand as to why I woke up in the middle of night.

I could hear a peculiar sound coming from some distance. It looked like sound of a thousand horses running feverishly. I concentrated. I could hear lot of commotion outside the room. I was totally confused.

Got up from the bed with a jerk and went out. I was shocked. I was not in my house. What I thought my bedroom was in fact a tent. It looked like I was in some military camp. Then came a much more rude shock.

There were people who were running helter skelter around. Most of them did not look like from modern times. They looked like artists from a movie on medieval times.My brain stopped taking notice of all these facts long ago with shock after shock it underwent.

I could sense an imminent danger racing towards the camp with the sounds of horses and the hoarse voices getting closer.

I started running away from the camp. Suddenly someone held my shoulder. It was a soldier. He looked astonished at my running away. Looking fiercely at me he handed over a big sword. I was not able to hold that with one hand, it looked pretty heavy. Though I could not understand his language, I could sense that he was ordering me to defend the camp not to flee.

The inevitable danger arrived in the form of some hundred odd soldiers. It looked like a huge army of soldiers.  All the people carried heavy swords. I looked at the people in our camp. They were trying very hard to defend the camp.

People were dying  around. It was a horrible and bloody war. I tried hiding behind a tent. I was sweating earlier. Now even that too dried up. I was face to face with death. It was only a matter of minutes before I would join the lifeless bodies that are scattered around. I lost the energy or desire to flee to save life. It seemed that I had prepared to die.

I don't know how much of time I lived that near death experience. I woke up again, this time in my bedroom. There were no more horses and soldiers. Death disappeared but it already sank into my mind. It took more than an hour to get the nerves back.

The book on Chengiz Khan I was reading before I went to sleep was still there staring at me.
It was not a biography of a person who successfully invaded vast part of the world in the medieval era, it is the description of life and death that played hide and seek on a daily basis. Whether one is alive or dead is decided by who wins in the game each day. It was a time where future came not in years, months or even days. It's about whether one will survive to take the next breath or not.

Work- life balancing, managing stress, de-stressing techniques, diet management, treadmills, entertainment, modern facilities... none were there.

We experience stress, they experienced physical and mental pain, the pain of death.

We experience fear of lack of comforts, they experienced fear of death

We feel about uncertainty in having good life style, they felt about a situation of lack of life.

Aren't we blessed...

Haven't we advanced in lives?

We may have problems.. but doesn't the severity of the problems came down?

Let us enjoy the life...

 Let us remember the fact that human race can sustain much more stress, much more uncertainty and fear..