ADDICTIONS

ADDICTIONS

I was once taught by teacher Rebecca in one of the many classes I have in my adulthood attended. Her hobbies were travelling and music. Once in a while she would come to class with a guitar and play very good music borrowed from one culture of the many places on earth that she had visited. What was however very interesting with her is that by choice and in this age of smartphones, she never owned a phone. Her mode of communication was email or home telephone. On asking her why, she simply said she did not need it.  

Many of our lives today are centred on smartphones and many cannot imagine life without it. It has simplified our lives completely be it keeping contacts, learning and news. On the flipside a smartphone is for some a curse for their lives with many hours lost everyday scrolling. At one time someone is reading news sites, then one social media platform to the other seeing photos, watching videos, chatting , searching and on and on. All is okay if someone has already completed their work and responsibilities but if that is making it difficult for someone to fulfil their duties, then we can rightfully say that this person who is lost on doom scrolling, has a phone addiction. 

Are you a phone addict? 

There are many addictions destroying our people; talk of alcoholism of people who abandon everything to drink every day, talk of betting that keeps people hoping to win one day as they all along lose close to all their cash, talk of Religion of people who spend all their time daily in churches praying or listening to preachings, addictions come in all manner of ways. I think that many of these activities are positive but the sin may be doing them without moderation. That explains why alcohol was a normal part of a meal during Jesus days and the same is practiced in many western cultures but coming home, alcohol became a sin because we have never been able to take it in moderation. 

Coming back to phone addiction, I think it could be more dangerous than alcoholism and sometimes it comes with other addictions like betting, flattering, pornography, cyber bulling, hacking and so on. Probably we could cut down on 80% of addictions by Overcoming phone addiction. So how can we do so. What about catching your 9 o'clock news instead of reading on phone? How about uninstalling betting and social media apps? How about replacing smart phones with a 'Mulika mwizi'? Maybe it can help someone overcome their addiction. 

Anyone suffering from phone addiction? What is your personal addiction? Do you have friends and relatives suffering from addictions? How do we help ourselves and others in addiction?

Maybe reading a bible verse prayerfully would help. So we read 1 Corinthians 6:12

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.

May God help us to do only the helpful things and not to be dominated by the vices.

@ Stephen Mungai