The Decision

My husband and I have several friends who either do not own a television or have one collecting dust in the basement. One day this past fall my husband said: "I wonder if we could live without T.V. like so and so..." This started the wheels in my head turning. Could we really go without a television in our home? We only have one T.V. set, we would've had two if mine had not gotten stolen right before we married. We do have satellite and have the expanded channel selection. When we first got satellite our reasoning for paying for more channels was that it included Boomerang and more History channels. While we do watch these channels, we don't nearly watch them enough to warrant paying that extra money. As I thought more and more about a life without television it dawned on me that I watch a lot of T.V.. Not just a few shows here and there like my husband but I could/can/have literally sit/sat in front of the T.V. all day on a Saturday and do nothing else. I soon realized that I was addicted to television! My husband, however, is not addicted. He can go days without viewing any of the shows he has Tivo'd, then he will sit down for about 2 hours watch those shows and be done for the week. I think this has a lot to do with how we were raised. His family is from a small farm town and the T.V. he had growing up could only receive 4 channels on a good day. Life did not revolve around the what was on the tube, but what was happening on the farm. I was raised in the city and I cannot remember a time when we did not own at least two televisions. I remember getting up in the mornings and turning on the T.V. before school and watching cartoons. I remember getting home from school and turning on the T.V. and watching cartoons. Then the T.V. was turned off briefly for dinner, which we did eat as a family, and then it was on again after dinner. It seemed like the T.V. was always on in our home. On a side note my sisters and I turned out just fine, it's just that we watched a lot of T.V. The only time I lived without a T.V. was 4 semesters of college, we weren't allowed to have them in the dorm. After college when I lived in Russia I watched Russian T.V. even though I didn't understand half of what was being said! As I thought about all of this a decision was made. Last Saturday I asked my husband if he could live without the television. His only concern was that we have an Xbox and a Wii and he still wanted to play them as well as watch movies. We decided that we would keep our big, "ancient" T.V. but cancel our satellite service and not get a digital converter box. Now there will be no temptations to veg for hours on end doing nothing productive.

Several more reasons went into the decision to change our (er...my) lifestyle other than my addiction. There are the obvious ones like: T.V. rots your brain, which oddly enough there is a study out there to see if T.V. really does rot your brain. There is a link to obesity and the amount of T.V. that one watches, that's a great reason alone to get rid of it! But my main reason for no T.V. is it's nothingness (not sure if that's a word but I'm going to use it!) When I watch television what am I accomplishing? Nothing, it's the biggest time waster that was ever invented. At least with the Internet you can engage other parts of your brain than what is engaged when you watch T.V.. Anything that is taught on television I can learn elsewhere and find out if it's even true. Plus I could've avoided a lot of hoopla about Tiger Woods if I had made the decision two months ago! It's not just wasting time, it's that the time could be filled with better and more fun things. I can't wait until the weather is warmer so that my husband and can go for evening walks. I want to play more games with him and spend more time with friends, T.V. just gets in the way. I do not want a life of nothingness. So now that it's done tomorrow night we are rearranging our furniture so that not everything points to the T.V. Now that the T.V. is off we can make our own adventures and not live vicariously through a big box!