We’ve never had it so good. But we’ve never been less happy. We live longer than any other generation in history. But we live in fear that cancer is just around the corner once we turn 80.
We have the highest standard of living ever imagined.
But it doesn’t stop us complaining when petrol goes up 20 cents every two or three weeks.
We have technology so incredible we can talk face to face with people we know on the other side of the planet for free.
But we are stressed out because social media platforms are stealing our spare time.
We live in great democracies where the right of free speech is enshrined in law.
But we’re quick to slam the government for wanting to know a little bit more about us.
I can go on and on, but you get the picture: having it all doesn’t guarantee happiness and that’s exactly what’s happening in major western democracies across the world.
United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Australia all display the symptoms of this malaise.
Is it just a case of full blown first world problems syndrome?
Or are we that bored with our lives that we have resorted to yelling at each other on social media to make things a little interesting?
And is Israel Folau’s suggestion that bushfires are God punishing us for legalising same sex marriage the straw that broke the camel’s back?
Or is the code swapper just suffering from what the great Gareth Evans described after leaving politics “relevance deprivation syndrome’’.
But let’s forget Folau, whose utterances mark him as a very un-Christian Christian.
Maybe it’s lack of job security that’s driving all this unhappiness, and a lot of people I have spoken to agree with that.
And does that explain why politically the trend is moving away from the centre and looking to the two extremes for solutions to our life’s problems.
And why in the last few years Christmas seems to have lost its mojo?
The business world pulls out all stops to get us to be happy enough to loosen the purse strings, but there’s nothing doing.
Most of us seem to be going through the motions in the last few days before Christmas arrives and that’s as good as it gets these days.
Whatever the cause is for such an attitude we need to snap out of it; we need to chill, to smell the roses.
Before it’s too late.
