More on Margin: "The Pains of Progress"

After my last post on margin (How's Your Margin?) a friend of mine led me to a book by Richard A. Swenson, M.D.  The book is Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.  I have never read the book or heard of the book but it is very interesting.  As a follow up to the last post I wanted to share an excerpt from the book with you.  Dr. Swenson makes the point that progress is largely responsible for our marginless living today.  Here's what Dr. Swenson has to say:

Because most of us do not know what margin is, we also do not know what marginless is.  We feel distressed, but in ill-defined ways.  We can tell life isn't quite what it used to be or perhaps not quite what we expected it should be.  Then we look at our cars, homes, and big screen TVs and conclude that our distress must be in our imaginations.

     Others deny vehemently that anything is wrong.  "Life has always been hard," they say.  "People have always been stressed.  It is simply part of living.  There has always been change to cope with.  There have always been economic problems, and people have always battled depression.  It is the nature of life to have its ups and downs--so why all the fuss?"

     I'm not the one who's making the fuss; I'm only writing about it.  I'm only being honest about what I see all around me.  Something's wrong.  People are tired and frazzled.  People are anxious and depressed.  People don't have the time to heal anymore.  There is a psychic instability in our day that prevents peace from implanting itself very firmly in the human spirit.  And despite the skeptics, this instability is not the same old nemesis recast in a modern role.  What we have here is a brand-new disease.

     To be sure, the pains of the past were often horrible beyond description.  To have your wife die in childbirth, your children crippled with polio, your cattle ravaged by tuberculosis, and your crops leveled by locusts is not the common definition of the good life.  But those were the pains of the past, and most of them are gone.  Unfortunately--and unexpectedly--the pains of progress are now here to take their place.  Prominent among them is the disease of marginless living.  (pg. 16-17).

Do you agree that marginless living is  result of progress?  How has the disease of marginless living affected you and/or your family?  What did you have to do to build margin back into your daily living?