Your Television, Your Life

         Frequently, during the waning hours of a busy day, when the world is wrapped in darkness, I want to just relax and plop down on the couch to watch a little television.  Something interesting, informative and hopefully entertaining.       

         Fat chance.             

         What I find instead is an overload of vacuity and violence; ugly images of someone committing some unspeakable cruelty against someone else; or the exhibition of some Hollywood people I don’t know and never want to know; or a commercial in which someone I never met is confiding to me his or her battle with some disease, and why I need such-and-such a medication.  Or the news.  The news is usually worst of all, full of threats against my world from a foreign enemy; of people committing awful atrocities against other people; or of the dysfunctional workings of our government, depending on which slanted side is telling the story.

            I sit and surf from channel to channel, sometimes going through seventy different channels, and finding nothing palatable.  Then I just turn the boob tube off altogether.  There is a reason they call it the `boob tube.’ 

            What happened to all the wonderful tv entertainment I grew up with?  No more Jackie Gleasons or Lucille Balls or Dean Martins.  No more singers and dancers.  Where did all that great entertainment go?  I can’t believe we don’t have talented people any more capable of keeping our spirits lifted.

            The bigger question is: what happened to the culture?   Somewhere on the road of tv programming, television morphed from entertainment and enjoyment to depression, fear, anxiety, and the highlighting of the lowliest lifestyles in our society.  All this only serves to create a negative mindset in the viewer of a world full of danger and limitations, which, in turn, engenders feelings of fear, depression, and worry. 

            The American Psychological Association [APA] has done studies of children at various ages who have watched thousands of hours of television, and its effects on them.  The results are not encouraging.  Watching a lot of tv has been shown to make children more aggressive, according to a 30-year study performed by Leonard Eron, Ph.D., chairman of the APA’s Commission on Violence and Youth.  According to Dr. Eron, the heaviest viewers of tv at age eight later became the most violent criminals, and are more likely to become violent with their own children.

            This tv diet of negativity and violence has a tremendous impact on adults as well as children.  We begin to see the world as unsafe, full of threats from every quarter, and totally randomly violent.  If you are just an ordinary citizen, you are most at risk.

            You might want to take a look at the problems going on in your life if you’re watching hours of television every week.  For sure, you are dealing with some very heavy issues.  They could be things like relationship or marital problems, problems with your children, problems in the workplace, financial problems, health issues, and so on.  When you fill your mind with so much negativity, what can you expect?  For sure, you will not reap positive, happy results.  There is a relationship between what you fill your mind with and what occurs in your reality.

            Your mind is a sacred place.  You need to think of it as such, and so protect and treat it with TLC.  You would not consciously poison your food, the very nourishment your body requires for peak operation.  So why would you poison your mind with that which results in less than optimal performance?  Why would you intentionally invite depression, fear, and anxiety?  Why would you intentionally kill creativity?  Your mind is your life; it is the most valuable tool you have.

            My best advice:  turn off the television.

 Sandra L. Lerner is the author of Connecting with Your Guardian Angel for Comfort, Protection and Guidance.

See http://www. Connectingwithyourguardianangel.com

Sandra L. Lerner is the author of Connecting with Your Guardian Angel. See www.connectingwithyourguardianangel.com.
She also has written several articles on various topics that have been published on the web in the recent past.

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