I often find myself at the end of the day wanting to decompress a little. Like most people, after dinner, clean-up, and or putting the kids to bed, we often want to 'relax' with a little t.v. Growing up television was a huge part of 'family time.' We would all gather around and sit down on the couch to watch Seventh Heaven or some other show like VH1 'Pop Up Video.' I am not going to try to argue that t.v is bad, or we should completely ban it from our homes or anything, however I do think we need to reevaluate how we are relaxing, and if what we are actually doing is achieving that.
Television is a stimulant by nature. The fast paced commercials and colors, sounds and images being flashed right before our eyes. Comedy, drama or action-filled shows or movies fill up the channels between all the popular networks. In our world television is the go to activity for evening time. People long to dive into another scenario and forget the current stressors and worries in their own lives. Now, is this bad to do this once in awhile? No. But are we really relaxing while we indulge in the world of television?
The average American watches 4 hours of t.v a day or 28 hours a week. Or think of it this way-a typical work day is 8 hours, which means that if you went to work for three days and all you did was watch t.v, that would equivocate to the average.
I literally cannot watch t.v and not have some thought pop in my mind like what are you doing right now? You could be reading or writing or crafting or cleaning! But the thought gently drifts away as I really think of the effort involved to do those tasks! Ha!
I think t.v does something to us that we don't really like. It connects us to people we do not know, jokes that are really only funny for a moment, and honestly gives us false connections to made up characters. I absolutely love Glee, and honestly I sometimes may or may not talk about certain character like I know them!
We as a people long for community but don't get it, we long to relax from a day full of stressors, but don't quite know how to relax. We long to cultivate friendships and build lasting relationships, but don't know how. I have made a short list of some things that I will really try to do this weekend. My go-to activity is watching t.v but I really want to try to switch it up.
1. Light candles, and pray over day and week // meditate
2. Do yoga. Get moving and stretch
3. Read a compelling interesting book
4. Craft-hand make some cards for people
5. Practice relaxation techniques
I completely recognize the relaxing part of turning on the t.v sitting on the couch after a long hard day. Its one of the best parts of television, the mind-numbing, do not have to think, shut my brain off mode. I guess the whole point of this is to truly find the way to relax and maybe really asking if watching t.v is really accomplishing that. I am not even close to doing these five things in the evening time and I definitely have my shows that I like to sit down and watch. I just wonder if I would feel more relaxed and revived in the mornings if I chose some different evening activities.
What activities do you do besides t.v?
