TV Watching

Zig Ziglar tells the story of a sweet little girl whose parents have a routine of gently waking her up each morning. They notice that she's growing and getting more responsible, so they decide to give her her own alarm clock. In a short period of time they notice her attitude change. Instead of the sweet and energetic girl, she has started to become irritable, tired, and quick tempered. After some talking with each other and the little girl, the parents decide to take back the alarm clock and start waking her up gently, as they did before. Soon after removing the alarm clock the girl returns to sweet and energetic self.

The reason for the little girl's attitude change, the parents found out, was that the alarm clock was set to a radio station that reported the news each morning. The sweet little girl was waking up every day to stories of tragedy, strife, and conflict. The realities of the world were weighing heavy on her. Her parents were quick to change.

Each morning my dog wakes me up at about 6:30 am for our morning walk. It's great because we watch the sun come up, enjoy the start of a new day together, and just generally take things slow. 

As we walk around our apartment complex, we also notice a lot of TV's on, with the news going. It makes me think of the little girl and the alarm clock. Does the TV news have a similar effect? What would happen if we took back the TVs from these households just like the alarm clock?

My wife and I use to watch a good bit of TV. When we found out we having a baby, we sat down one night and talked about how we wanted to raise our child, and the household we wanted him to grow up in. One of the things we decided to do was cut back, and possibly eliminate TV. We got down to having a TV with no cable, and just watching PBS.

We now watch about 2 hours of TV a week. We enjoy antiques Roadshow on Monday night, British comedy on Saturday evenings, and Lake Rise to Candleford on Sunday. We also sprinkle in a movie once or twice a month. (although my wife does look forward to the new season of Downtown Abbey that starts this January)

We enjoy watching relatively commercial free programs, the slow nature of the stories and shows, and turning on the TV to watch a program, then turning it off when it's done. 

This isn't something everyone should do, TV watching habits are a choice for each person or household. But, life seems to move slower, allow for more time together, enjoying good conversation, a slow walk together, and work that needs to be done gets finished.

And we don't miss the news. Even without watching it we usually find out what's going on. And if something happens, and we don't know about it, my wife and I smile at each other when someone is surprised that we hadn't heard the big news. We enjoy our limited TV watching and much prefer to stay sweet and energetic.