There’s so much advice about reducing stress that it’s created a entire new genre of stress.

Hundreds of tips to try right now. Self help guides with months-long action plans. Shelves of books. Magazine headlines.

Exercise more, make lists, declutter. Whole new sets of demands.

Self worth seems to be measured in the capacity for serenity rather than implied by the intrinsic value of living beings. It’s not enough to manage life’s stresses any more; you have to feel serene, calm and peaceful, too. That’s a stressful requirement.

And placing all that focus on eliminating something serves mostly to tighten its grip on one’s attention.

Late on a gray December afternoon, I was back in the car after scrambling among crowds of people to finish an avalanche of errands. Next up to exit the parking lot, the traffic light turned red, creating one more barrier between me and placing the last X on the to-do list, the prerequisite for curling up under an afghan with a book. It was a big intersection with an interminable sequence of permission arrows, the beginning of another protracted wait. The list beside me on the seat seemed to pulsate.

A sound made me look upward expanding my view from the concrete and cars directly in front of me to an endless expanse of gray sky above me. An infinite sky, alive with a mass migration of Canada geese.

Not just a single arrowhead formation; there were fifteen, twenty, maybe more distinct flocks, some closer, some further, creating layers of dimension in the grayness that had, only a moment before, seemed oppressively flat. In constant motion, the geese remained fluidly in their formations as they swerved through the sky, closer then further, flocks converging momentarily and then moving in separate paths again, a convocation of tiny communities. Their woodwind calls filled the air.

Inside the car was music of a different sort. A carol had come on — Variations on the Boar’s Head Carol (Rick Sowash) (click on #3 A Christmas Divertimento to hear the closest I could get to this piece). The hauntingly bold strains of strings and piano, and the far-off honking of the geese became one, sounds in solution. I watched and listened, in a concentrated effort to absorb a moment in time that could never be repeated. I wished the light would never turn green.

A gray sky, a red light, crowds and delays – each can be bad or good. It’s all a choice, all about selecting your vantage point. In that moment, my perception of what was going on around me underwent a sea change –

My stress dissolved like an image on a movie screen that disintegrates and falls away.

You can’t eliminate stress — it’s a real part of life — so perhaps stop trying. Instead, open your eyes, look, watch, listen to the orchestration of life around you, always a brilliant cacophony that plays only once.