Three years ago I gave up watching television. I didn’t realize how profound a step this was in reclaiming myself from the unaware masses. We are being conditioned. We don’t realize this is happening to us…and it has been happening for a very long time now. Is it too late to save ourselves?
We are being fed opinions, not news. We are being fed pretty pictures that have nothing to do with reality. We are being told not to think…”they” will think for us. ”This is what we should buy… This is what pretty looks like…This is what thin looks like…This is good for you…This is what you need… This is how you should behave… This is what ypuo should think… Let us do it for you…” And it seems to make things so much easier for us…so we allow it. We don’t have to think anymore. And now we’ve lost ourselves.
Hopefully there comes a day when each of us becomes aware that we have lost choices, ideas, dreams, our unique creativity, our unique selves, and instead we are drowning in judgments and opinions not of our making, nor indeed of our thinking.
I hope you can remember a book that you read and enjoyed once upon a time. Reading or listening to an audible book gets our creative juices going….Can you remember that book that gave you that feeling? We see pictures in our mind, we feel the characters come alive.. they are real to us.. we go on an incredible journey with the characters. The whole story lives within us.
When my son, Luke, was 7 years old…we were having breakfast before going to school and he just finished the last page of Peter Pan. I heard a great sob come from him as his head fell into the pages. He had finished a great experience and was distraught. I told him there were so many books that he will find great delight in…and we can always go back and reread them. He is a great reader and writer now.
If I have loved a book, and then a movie of the book comes out, I seldom go to see it as it will always disappoint me. The movie will never match up to what the author and I have created together. I have an IPad now and if I want some new entertainment, I will browse around and see if there is something I would like to watch. It is MY choice. I enjoy Ken Burns’ documentaries. He uses photographs and letters in the most brilliant way to tell stories… and in none of his documentaries do I feel excluded or outside of his work.
Maybe it would be a good time right now to let go of television…. At least only turn it on to see something you have chosen to watch, and if it is special to you. Then, it will be YPU making the choices. When we allow others to lead us through the mire of TV, we often turn off the set feeling somehow used and abused.
Try taking your power back. Find the YOU that you lost along the way. Anyway, it’s a strong first step in reclaiming yourself. Because as you know, we have to be ourselves…everyone else is already taken
by Jill Townsend
Here’s our podcast about TV
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/too-much-television-how-tv-rewires-our-brain-why-its/id1313078549?i=1000430471721&mt=2