Once, I was a farmer working in the great outdoors, able to move with the breeze into open spaces.

The work was hard, but I could observe the quaking of the trees’ leaves, perceive what was otherwise being blown about and in what direction.

Comfort lies in such perceptions, and I could feel the absence of stress more than the weight of it.

Then, I moved to town, worked as an attorney at an inside location.

A recent Harvard School of Public Health report asked people to identify what helped them most in obtaining relief from stress. At the top of their list? Spending time outdoors (“Need Help For Stress and Anxiety? Maybe You Shouldn’t See A Therapist,” The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2023).

My move to town was doubly stressful. Another article, from the Washington Post, “The Happiest, Less Stressful, Most Meaningful Jobs in America (Jan. 6, 2023),” revealed that the practice of law is the most stressful occupation.

So, both location and occupation affect stress, but you already know that. I suspect you also know that stress has been increasing and can drag a person down.

What you may not know and be surprised to learn is one of the reasons why this is occuring.

A significant cause for the increase in stress in society appears to be that, over the last few decades, the number of English and history majors at our nation’s universities has been reduced by roughly one-half. Enrollments in the humanities are in freefall.

For example, at Harvard University in the 1970s, 30% of the student body majored in one of the humanities, a percentage now standing at 7%.

Conversely, enrollment in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) has increased substantially.

It’s not so much that we have our priorities wrong — STEM stuff is essential. Technological progress, though presenting unique challenges, has served us well. It may even save us if artificial intelligence doesn’t destroy us. But it can’t do it alone.

James Shapiro, an English prof at Columbia, attributes increased stress to two things: First, the pervasiveness and speed with which technology has invaded our lives, and, second, society’s allocation of resources away from the liberal arts.

If you graph funding for the humanities since the 1950s, you’ll produce an upside-down parabola, with the left arm trending higher, curving to an apex, then crashing after the 2007 economic crisis.

According to Prof Shapiro, a graph showing the growth and decline of democracy during that same period follows this same curve.

Those graphs reflect the reality that, for the first time in our nation’s history, an upcoming generation has less knowledge of the human past than the generation that came before it.

Hard to tell where you’re going when you don’t realize where you’ve been.

Still, all is not lost.

Sanjing Sarma, a mechanical engineering professor at MIT, says artificial intelligence can write low-code computer programs, but it could “no more conceive of Virgina Wolf’s ‘Mrs. Dolloway’ than it can guide and manage an organization of people.

“I think the future belongs to the humanities,” Sarma concluded.

A conclusion supported by career studies that show humanities majors, with their writing, communication, and broadly based analytical skills, often assume leadership roles in society.

And change is evolving. People in their 30s and 40s and older are taking advantage of community colleges and/or internet access to higher education. In many cases, they are not going back to school to take technical courses. Rather, they are returning to study the humanities.

Having been out in the world for a few years, experiencing the realities of competitive existence, they too, are asking the question: “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

Surely, it’s more than for greater convenience we live.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote of feeling shallow. Technology had shortened his attention span by filling his day with petty distractions. Politics was not enlightening, containing — as it so often does — only partisan outrage.

So he escaped to art, finding relief from the “yapping within” and opening his consciousness to an appreciation not of new facts, new gadgets, or some new political amorality but of emotions that could move him beyond narrowness.

We have access to the same reflective resource: The Thunder Bay Arts Council, Art in the Loft, and the Besser Museum, to name only three.

Works of artists, many local, cause us to pause in admiration of their ability to create paths leading to fresh insights. Erwin Lewandowski’s colored pencil drawings stop time, allowing us to better appreciate beauty. Carol Lund’s exhibit, “Textures of Bygone Perfection,” is transformative and is on display at the Besser Museum until July 29.

Give yourself a break from trivial distractions and allow the fresh breeze of art to blow some stress away.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs monthly. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.