Last year, for National Stress Awareness Month, I published a series of articles here about how stress can be contagious. And I asked readers to vow not to pass their stress on to others for one day.

This year, for National Stress Awareness Day, I want to raise the stakes.

I want you to take that vow formally and publicly. I want you to invite your family and friends and coworkers to take the vow, too.  I want to see if we can create one day in the world that is noticeably less stressful … by taking responsibility for our stress and vowing not to pass it on. (See the end of this article for details.)

It’s really very simple.

When you are suffering from long-term, chronic stress, or just the repeated hassles and incivilities of modern life, you are more likely to make a mistake, drop the ball, kick the dog, blow a fuse. You are also more likely to be sleep-deprived, which makes the other effects of stress, already bad, much worse.

You are also more likely to be hypersensitive, quick to anger, abrupt with your children, or rude to some innocent stranger on the street who just happens to get in your way.

In other words, once you get stressed, if you don’t release that stress quickly and effectively, you are very likely to contribute to someone else’s stress. This is what I call “stresscalation”-- the way in which we pass our stress on to other people, often unwittingly.

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Let me be brief, as there is a hurricane coming and I have lots to do.

But I really need to say this:

Over the last two days, I have heard many politicians and emergency officials on the East Coast reminding us to be "smart" or "cautious."  But I wish that one of them would also remind us to be kind.

Maybe that would be stepping outside the bounds of conventional politics—straying into a more spiritual kind of leadership. Maybe, in preparing for a disaster, kindness just isn't as important as smarts. But still, I feel the need to hear someone remind us about its value.

Of course, health and safety depends on many very practical factors, such as how well we have prepared and how effective the emergency services are in our area. But I expect that much of our experience of a natural disaster also depends on whether we have taken the opportunity to experience a moment of kindness with a stranger.

Let me back up a step.

On Thursday evening, my family and I were evacuated from Cape May, the first place in the Northeast to face a mandatory evacuation. When we heard the order, we had only a ¼ tank of gas, and there were already long lines at gas stations. Nonetheless, we had to join the bumper-to-bumper traffic getting off the Cape, with no sense of when or if we would get gas, or how far up the coast the traffic (or panic) would continue.

I noticed how easily tempers could flare in such a situation, even three days before the hurricane was due to hit. Once we did find a gas station with supplies and a reasonable line, two vehicles—a car and a huge RV--actually cut in line. The RV actually put itself in a position that made it impossible for even those people who already had gas to leave. This astounding and inconsiderate action caused other drivers to become quite angry, not surprisingly, and a shouting match ensued.

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For National Stress Awareness Month, I wrote two articles here about how we pick up stress from others and pass it on--what I called "stresscalation." I argued that we have an ethical obligation to stop our own role in this stresscalation.

But could we also play a role in stopping the stresscalation that we find around us?

While pondering this, I remembered a much-loved picture book from my childhood, A Fly Went By, by Mike McClintock. This simple story not only illustrates how stress can be contagious--it also shows us a state of mind that can help us stop the stresscalation.  

A Fly Went By begins on a sunny, summer morning. A young boy relaxes in a rowboat, at the edge of a lake. Without a care in his mind, he remarks:

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When we pass stress on to others, we create a more stressful world.

It doesn't matter how we got stressed in the first place, or whose fault it was originally. As soon as we're stressed, it is our responsibility, and what we do with it is up to us.  

When we bring our stress forward, into the next thing we do, it has an effect. We make costly mistakes. We fail to notice novel solutions. We give other people a difficult day. And then they are liable to do the same to others. In other words, we become agents of stresscalation.

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