Tiredness, stress, lack of time.

We try to pack a lot of living into what always seems like too few hours in a day.

Our jobs, the major part of our existence, vacuum up most of our lives and leave us trying to cram as much as we can into the recreational slot.

But most of the time, you find yourself too tired, during your 'free' time, to have a good time.

Staring bleary-eyed at the TV or lounging in bed is as far as some people get, they say. Fortunately television isn't a total loss. Not all programmes are for the brain-dead, and channels like the History Channel and National Geographic offer much food for thought as well as entertainment.

Even the better television sitcoms, thanks to the coruscating wit of their brilliant writers and excellent timing and delivery by talented comedians, serve to inform as they entertain.

They deliver a few lessons on the foibles of human nature even as they crack you up. And there's the feel-good factor after you've watched a good show. You feel like it's time well-spent.

Still, that's the couch potato quotient of your free time. And it doesn't take too much energy.

Underlying it are still those nagging twin complaints characteristic of life as we know it now - too tired, too stressed, no time.

It's a frightening thought. But it's one we can nip in the bud. Maybe starting with a generation of kids who seem too harassed to know that they have a right to a good time.

I get particularly annoyed when I see my young neighbours, dressed in their uniforms, hauling backpacks and heading for school on the FIRST day of the holidays.

'CCA,' they tell me in explanation, or 'remedial classes', when I know that what they really want to say is: 'Give me a break.'

A friend who runs a bookstand in a tuition centre tells me that Saturdays, for most young families, seem even more stressful than weekdays.

It's a mad rush from one class to another - tuition, art, swimming, more tuition...

Kids get stressed and parents get anxious trying to apportion time to tasks they all must fulfil on everybody's day off.

A woman I know with twin daughters wants my own child, a recent graduate, to tutor her girls so they will be better in school.

'Better?' I asked, knowing that the Primary 3 pupils unfailingly come first and second in their class every term.

'Yes,' she said, only half-jokingly. 'A is not enough. They should be getting all A-Stars.'

I wonder if they ever make it to the playground downstairs - at least now and then. Or if they've heard of hopscotch. Or if they've ever played hide-and-seek.

They'll probably say no if I ask, because there isn't much time to fit play between homework, tuition and working on their assessment books.

Free time might even become a thing of the past as highly-stressed future generations talk about how boring life was in their grandparents' time. When those backward types actually sat down in front of a TV instead of watching it on the go on a handheld device.

You feel tired just thinking about it!