3 Amazing Things That Happened When I Stopped Watching TV
First, I shriveled up in a ball of boredom.
I come from a family of addicts.
Television addicts.
They wake up and turn on the TV. They go to sleep with the TV on. Their homes are never quiet because voices from a box permeate the air.
People used to tell me that they did not watch TV, and I thought, “How Boring!”
That says more about me than it does about them.
When I left the country for the first time, I lived in a dorm residence with no television. And I did not really miss it at all.
Here are three things that happened when I stopped watching TV.
I Found Other Things To Do
It probably did not hurt that I was in France, and I could have spent every waking moment in The Louvre and still not seen everything.
Anyway, I filled my leisure time with other leisure activities.
Watching TV is the ultimate passive leisure activity. Passive leisure activities require neither mental nor physical energy. Other passive leisure activities include
- Reading books or magazines
- Looking at artwork at a museum
- Sitting in a park and people-watching
I would argue that television is the ultimate soul-sucking passive leisure activity. Most channels tell you what you should think, why you should like things, or just desensitize you to nonsense.
I Began Questioning My Ideas
I have always been someone with strong opinions. A little too strong, some would say. When I stopped watching television, I gradually began questioning the origin of my strong opinions.
As an example, I was a stark proponent of stem-cell research. This is not to say that stem-cell research is right or wrong. But here is the truth: I did not even know what stem-cell research was.
Why did I have strong opinions about the topic?
When I stopped watching TV, I began questioning the origin of my thoughts.
Most of my thoughts came from the television.
My Conversation Topics Changed
Perhaps a testament to idea number two, my topics of conversation changed.
In days past, I spent a lot of time talking about people I did not know and would never meet. I gossiped about their lives, their trips to rehab, their divorces. I feel that I needlessly expended energy talking about the imaginary lives of elevated people.
Why? Probably due to the saturation of these different topics in the media.
Don’t get me wrong — television can be a great distraction from the stressors of life. But when I stopped watching TV, I was able to do some soul searching that I do not think I would have done otherwise.