I think I am experiencing a new phenomenon that could only happen in America after a holiday like Christmas. I am calling it P.W.S. (which stands for Package Withdrawal Syndrome). I think there should be a study done on this to see how serotonin levels in my brain are affected by what is happening to me, or more specifically, what I am currently feeling; I am experiencing withdrawals!
For weeks, I was receiving packages from Amazon, or some other online retailer, every day at my door with my name on it. Even though I had to pay for what was in these said packages, I started to feel like someone (me, namely) loved me. Now that Christmas is over, the package deliveries have stopped (or at least slowed considerably), and I find myself longingly looking for boxes on my front door step. I am starting to get kind of sad.
Withdrawal syndrome is real, even if no one has ever linked it to packages at your front door before. Withdrawal syndrome has also been called “discontinuation syndrome,” which I guess would actually make more sense for what I am going through. Typically, it only happens with reduction or discontinuation of certain types of medication, but can’t package delivery be a type of soothing balm for someone as insecure as me?
People experience withdrawals with all kinds of things: alcohol, antidepressants, nicotine, opioids, benzodiazepines…even cannabis! Even though I don’t have a degree in neuroscience, I am going to call P.W.S. a real thing (because we live in an internet culture and self-diagnosis is how most of us operate). Let me give you the symptoms and the correct course of treatment if you are experiencing P.W.S. and don’t know what to do next.
P.W.S. happens when a culture focuses too much on stuff, or things, to make themselves feel happy and fulfilled. P.W.S. has been closely linked to self-absorption, self-centeredness, or self-focus. When the thing that make one feel better is removed, he or she begins a slow spiral into depression, which may result in more packages being ordered from online retailers to self-medicate. This cycle can result in a lifestyle of accumulation of things that a person doesn’t need, but feels like they have to have; it can also result in massive debt.
The only cure? Killing the self.
When I say “killing the self,” I do not mean physical death, although if P.W.S. is not taken care of soon enough, it may eventually result in that outcome. Killing of self refers to what we worship and where our gaze lingers. In Matthew 16:24 Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus uses an implement of death to speak about following Him and living in the Kingdom of God.
Tim Keller says about this verse, “A better way to put it is the minute you believe in Jesus Christ you died on the cross with him.” As followers of Jesus, every day we get up and remember we died to our old way of life, of looking for packages and things to bring us joy. In Jesus’ day if you happened to see someone walking with a cross, it wasn’t weird like it would be today; you would see that person and know it was the last thing they would ever do in their life—they were going to their death.
Jesus calls us to be a people who, in spite of trouble and hardship (sometimes as simple and confusing as package withdrawal), to look to the Cross in everything. It’s not focusing on our own death, but Jesus’ death and resurrection, that keeps our hearts and eyes on what matters most. Our own happiness and fulfillment was never meant to be what drove humanity; it was focus on, and worship of, the only one who is worthy of our devotion and praise.
That’s Jesus (not Amazon) in case you happened to be fuzzy on that last point.
