Nekochan's Journal

Nekochan's musing of the month (1/97):

So what about stress? Caves and fires...

Martians and Venusians have different ways of dealing with stress...naturally. This goes back to pre-historic days, when they all lived in caves and lived on mammoth meat.

When a Martian is feeling stress, he will retreat to the furthest recesses of the cave to read the cave drawings (which was their form of a newspaper). As he pores over the drawings, or sometimes scratches out new ones to fix something, he gradually becomes absorbed in the task and his stress will ebb away. Generally he is unable to really hold a conversation at the beginning of his cave time--only after he is finished with whatever task he engages in to forget his stress.

When a Venusian is feeling stress, she will immediately gather with her other Venusian sisters around the fire in front of the cave to discuss all her problems. The longer she talks about it, the better she feels, especially because her Venusian sisters know how to just listen without trying to offer solutions that she doesn't need. After a satisfying round of just sounding off with her understanding Venusian sisters, she feels immensely better.

Nekochan's tip of the month: About the worse thing that could happen is for Martians and Venusians to be stressed out at the same time--it's totally incompatible. The Martian doesn't want to talk during his cave time, and the Venusian doesn't want to be ignored or hear about proposed solutions to her problems.

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