One of the buzzword phrases of 2017 was ‘fake news.’ People are suddenly so indignant about the falsified news feeds that fill our social media pages. It’s funny how we selectively care about some of the junk that’s fed to us by the media, but we gobble up other garbage like it’s filet mignon.

News flash: Most of our culture is a fake news feed.

We place materialism above altruism. We place politics over people. We pray at the feet of celebrity gods. We allow our id’s hungers to overpower our innate sense of right and wrong.

As the human race, we have lost focus on what matters most, often seeking meaning and joy from all the wrong places.

Joy should come from relationships and helping our fellow man, but we have reduced joy to a marketing campaign – a false promise on the other end of a credit card transaction. A fleeting feeling from a deviant sexual relationship. A secret addiction’s carrot before the crushing blow of the stick.

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that there are millions of good people in the world who get it. People who see through the smokescreen of main-stream culture’s false promises. People who have rightly aligned their priorities and are serving their brothers and sisters. People who are leading their families in the ways of truth.

But I also know it’s easy for good people to lose perspective. I know how hard it is for me to stay focused on the things that matter most…on the people who matter most.

I am lured into purchases I don’t need. I have allowed my flesh to take the driver’s seat that my mind should rightly occupy. I have to fight daily against the fake feeds to recognize the real.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow was famous for his theory know as the ‘Hierarchy of Needs.’ The theory places basic survival needs at its base. After survival, come our psychological needs, and the paramount of this pyramid used to be self-actualization. Maslow refined his theory in the 70s, placing ‘transcendence’ at the peak of human needs.

In other words, mankind’s ultimate goal is to reach a point where our lives transcend our own needs. Purposeful lives look beyond themselves, beyond the temporary.

This transcendence can take many forms, but Maslow observed a common experience among people who reached this state. He called them ‘peak experiences,’ describing them as, “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”

These blissful moments didn’t happen after buying a car, after a promotion or after a certain political party was voted into office.

These moments of pure joy often occur in the most mundane circumstances: while sharing breakfast with family, taking a walk in the woods or watching the sunrise in the still of dawn.

Have you ever encountered one of these pure joy, peak moments? I have.

I have experienced it when truly recognizing the beauty of creation and the world around us. I have felt the connectedness of humankind in a way that has moved me to tears. Moments with my wife and children have filled me with unspeakable joy.

All of these experiences have given me glimpses into true joy. Sadly, these moments are fleeting for me, often replaced by anxiety about work, selfish desires or other clouded thoughts about things that don’t matter.

My prayer for each of us is that we will be able to harness these moments of joy. I believe these peak experiences are glimpses of truth. They are reminders that we are part of something great, something unseen, something impossible to fully fathom.

Do you feel it from time to time? Bask in it. Let the fakeness of mass media and the false promises of addiction melt into nothing in the warmth of its rays. You and I were created for more.