The simple truth: if you are ‘high’ all the while you must be snorting coke!

Here is the simple truth; No one is on a ‘high’ twenty four seven and if you are ‘high’ all the while you must be snorting coke!   I write this with a sense of irony because our world has now come to seek these peak moments constantly, every hour if not every day.

No one really has these constant euphoric moments and exhilarating days and the absence of them should not lead one to fallaciously conclude that they are ‘depressed’. Sadly the term ‘depression’ is very widely used by people who are not actually depressed but temporarily unhappy. And to be honest, I take umbrage to the glib use of the word ‘depressed’ by some flippant teeny boppers  and those who don’t really understand what people who truly suffer from depression go through.

Most people have ordinary days but that does not mean they have ordinary lives. Our lives are filled with beautiful tasks that have been made to sound mundane and we have foolishly come to believe it to be true. As a consequence we have come to accept that the acts we perform each day are no more than boring routine actions.

So let me give you an example.  If Master Chef told you that today for breakfast  you would be served piping hot fermented batter of ground rice  steamed in circular moulds and served with a dip of spicy coconut shavings  you would end up eating nothing more than  our humble ‘idli’ made to sound like it was being named dish of the year.

So why then have we come to believe that the routine is mundane? Why have we come to believe that feeding our family, cleaning our home, working a nine to five job, celebrating a birthday in the confines of our home or walking in the park is boring? These actions of ours bring life to others and there is nothing mundane in life giving actions.

So the simple truth is that our lives are joyful and that joy is not dependent on what we do or what we have or where we went today. The true absence of joy is not due to the lack of possession but due to the lack of position; how far are we from Jesus Christ?

Several years ago a preacher once described true JOY as ‘J’ESUS ‘O’THERS and ‘Y’OU. The secret of being joyful is in the re- alignment of our position vis-à-vis God and ourselves. It must be Christ first, others second and finally ourselves. This is not some self-negating Christian ideology. The material world would like us to believe that true joy comes from positioning our needs or ourselves first. The perpetuation of this lie makes us want to possess more while in truth the pockets of big business only ends up being lined with profits.

So don’t come to believe that your today was not as ‘high’ as that of someone else who posted on social media.  It may seems that everyone on social media seems to be ‘happier’ than you are but then again look deep inside your today; you gave life when you fed your family, you brought hope when you encouraged your spouse who had a bad day at work, you spread joy when you opened your purse in charity and none of these are mundane.

Fr Warner D’Souza