Do you have a lot of stress in your life?

Stress caused by your job, finances, kids?

Or maybe from watching too much TV news filled with politics, gun violence and storm-damage-filled weather reports?

I like to think my job is one of the top most stressful occupations. After all, putting out a newspaper under a large, always looming weekly or daily deadline ain’t easy.

You just get done putting out one week’s edition and it is right on to the next one.

And hey, it’s not easy coming up with a creative topic each and every week for this inane editor’s column. Plus, there is a lot of pressure from the boss to get it done before the last minute which rarely ever happens.

Thus this topic of stress.

They say air traffic controllers and 911 emergency dispatchers are some of the top jobs as far as stress goes. And Wall Street brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Some of my friends in the law enforcement business say their jobs can be very stressful. I believe them. Same goes for nurses, doctors, social workers and firemen.

Not to mention soldiers.

Some of the things they have to see and put up with as part of their work can cause something called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

You know you have a really stressful occupation when it often results in a condition with the word stress in it.

But, in fact, most jobs have some sort of stress level attached.

Except maybe one.

Beach front restaurant owner in Zihautenejo, Mexico.

I know someone with that job.

His name is Diego and he lived for 21 years in the United States. He worked in the home construction industry in Las Vegas, Wyoming, Chicago and Florida.

Life in the U.S. is way too stressful, Diego says. Americans are too filled with all kinds of pressure and stress in their life. They worry about everything.

In fact, when he lived here, he says he also felt way too much stress.

It was like he caught it from his American friends and co-workers.

So, he shipped his money home to Mexico where his family used it to buy a house for him and he used the rest to buy the restaurant right on the Maderas Bay beach in Zihautenejo.

Then he emigrated back out of the U.S. and went home to his native land.

Now, he says, he comes to work everyday in paradise and has no worries, no pressure and no stress.

I pointed out that being a small business owner anywhere must be stressful, even on the beach. You have to make a buck (or a peso) or two to keep the business running.

Trust me, I have been there, done that, and it is stressful.

There I go thinking like an American again, Diego said. How can you feel stress when you are sitting on a beautiful beach in one of the most perfect places on the planet with your feet in the sand?

Don’t worry so much about everything. It will be fine, it will all work out, was Diego’s philosophy.

I had to admit I was feeling pretty stress-free. But maybe that was the Corona.

However, perhaps Diego was on to something.

After all, he is not the only one who thinks so.

Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman felt a lot of stress living in the Shawshank Prison. But when they got out (one by escaping, one by being paroled), they looked for a place that was stress-free.

And at the end of the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ they wind up on the beach in Zihautenejo, Mexico.

Remember that scene? Robbins is sanding on a boat and Freeman comes walking down the beach in a suit.

But wait.

If you spent every day in paradise on the beach in Zihaut, wouldn’t life become, well, sort of boring? Isn’t it stress that gives life its edge, makes each day interesting?

Or is stress just good for giving us high blood pressure and heart attacks?

Maybe I need to do more research on this topic.

I might have to find out when the next Sun Country flight to Zihaut is scheduled.