09.28
In Words of Wisdom | Tags: tv movies words of wisdom living life
On the last article we addressed hacking away at the unessentials. Unessentials are things that we actually don’t need. Things like oxygen, water, food, clothing, and a house over your head are truly essential items. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, television, and the radio are not truly essential. Simply look at your life and begin cultivating. Look at your life as a garden; is it full of healthy & robust plants, flowers? Baring healthy fruit and pollen? Or is it producing thorns, briars, and thistles? Only you know what type of garden is on the inside, what you truly feel. You need to begin to take control of your life and take back precious time that you give whole-heartedly to the religion of TV.
Most of the time dedicated to watching television is not productive to the individual. The themes are generally negative, which include murder, drunkenness, rape, immorality, deceit, lying, stealing, cheating, the negative list can go on and it is much larger than anything positive you can get out of TV. There are a few educational programs that are beneficial, like the History Channel or Discovery Channel, but all programs need to be monitored for content. Television in its totality instead of its fragmented state can be negative, generally speaking. The substance of television programming is to get you to buy something. And most often, it’s not love, kindness, and mercy.
When you watch TV you are an open receiver. Images and audio are being downloaded into your system. A lot of negativity you aren’t even detecting, you are becoming numb and desensitized to the content. I was recently talking to one of my students about a movie that another student had told me about that had a lot of grotesque content. I was surprised at some of the scenes and that my 14 year old student said that it didn’t bother him. My question to you: Shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t seeing a body being mutilated on a giant screen bother you? Again, we as individuals are society and if the love and kindness is being stolen from us, what is humanity to become?
I have a garden of bamboo and some of it reaches 30 feet high. I also have a flower garden as well as a vegetable garden. There is a certain amount of responsibility based on time that I have to give to my gardens; pruning, watering, fertilizing, and general upkeep. What’s amazing is how fast weeds and pests can infiltrate a garden and turn beauty into ugliness. Lack of water or too much water can also have a negative effect on a garden. Pruning is essential to produce new growth, like our life we will get pruned, and it will hurt, but there will be growth after the pruning process. Our garden will die in a matter of weeks if proper care is not administrated constantly. Like our mind and our bodies, they also require nourishment. Peaceful time and contemplation is vital for our growth. There was a movie in the 80’s about stealing time, I only saw a short 15-20 minutes of the movie but I termed the word “langaliers”. Langaliers to me are people who steal your time, that produce nothing positive in your life and in some cases I believe they are put there only to steal time.
When I go through my week I identify langaliers constantly, but no longer just as people. A langalier is anything thats purpose is to steal time which we honestly don’t have that much of. Again to refer to the previous article, look at it as a football field, there’s a beginning end zone and an ending end zone. What we want to do is stay on the field as long as possible. We start on one side of the football field when we come into this existence. The half-way mark of the football field is the half-way mark of your life. The opposite end zone is the ending of your life. So, from end zone to end zone is your life lived here on Earth. Make it a memorable life.
Starting Sunday, October 3rd through Sunday, October 10th for anyone who would like to participate we will be doing a No TV or Movies Week, and replacing them with books, relaxing music and/or board games. We all know that most of us watch too much TV. We want to encourage people to evaluate how much time they spend watching television or movies as opposed to interacting with their spouse, significant other, family etc. Even if you are reading this at a later date, I encourage you to find a week on your own.
After the week is through instead of just turning on the TV and watching whichever program happens to be on, try setting a limit of how much television you want to watch per day. Try watching a movie with your family that everyone can enjoy. You will be surprised how much more you can accomplish in a day. If a movie or television program goes against your personal belief, it doesn’t make any sense to support the program. Try to pick movies or TV programs that edify you as a person. Movies and TV programs carry messages. I encourage you to look at what program you’re watching and find out what message it’s trying to convey to you without your realization. (Try to find out what they’re selling and make sure you want to buy it.)
Recommended Books:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
People are Idiots and I Can Prove It by Larry Winget
Bad Childhood, Good Life by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
The Natural Way to Vibrant Health by N.W. Walker or any other books by N.W. Walker
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
The Wise Woman by George MacDonald
Recommended Board Games:
Sorry!
Monopoly
Pictionary
Taboo
Recommended Music:
Kitaro
Peter Davidson
Classic Instrumentals
Any soft, relaxing, meditative music
Grandmaster Gallaher
16 Responses.
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This blog is right on the money. These are words to live by because unrestrained television watching can be a tremendous drain on productivity. Equally as bad, television can be a barrier to creativity and can dull the mind. As the blog suggests, there are ways to make television work for your benefit if you use television viewing as an opportunity for learining. One way is to keep a journal of what you watch, analyzing the content and writing down your interpretation of that program’s message. For example, my wife and I watch films on DVD at home. After each new DVD, I write an analysis of the film. The aspects I write about range from the details of the plot, the theme, how the characters interacted with each other, how the director’s style (editing, lighting, soundtrack, setting, camerawork) affected the telling of the story, how the film fit into the times or the current times. to what I thought about the film’s message. After I write my review, I give it to my wife to read. She compares her reaction to the film with my notes, and then we discuss her observations and my notes. Sometimes I add comments to my notes based on what my wife observed. This has been a good way for both of us to develop our critical thinking skills while we spend quality time talking with each other. Take some time to really live as the blog suggests and you will be very happy weith what you find.
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What a great idea. Thanks alot.
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For the past sixth months now I have been pretty well television free, the exception being the odd movie every so often.
Now I hadn’t set myself up to purposely avoid television, it more or less just happened as I found more rewarding activities.
Now only a couple days into this challenge of actively avoiding the television I realized how pervasive it is. When I was at the gym I caught my focus gradually shifting over the one of the televisions on the wall, without even thinking about it my eyes would keep drifting over the flashing lights and words, that is scary.
When at home I am far more aware of much TV other people are watching, I constantly hear the noises of one through my walls whenever someone else is awake in the house because the first thing they do is turn the television on and when they decide to sleep, television is off. These are the only two times the power button is touched.
With only being a few days in the challenge as a non-tv viewer I am made increasingly uncomfortable by how constant a force the television is on our minds, at the gym, home, work. Even driving, half the time a mini van is in front of me I can catch a glimpse of sponge bob on my drive home.
It really does not hurt to go for an extended amount of time without the television. My name is Adam, and I am TV free.
Great read! You may want to follow up to this topic!
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