The Original Big Screen TV

Glinda writes:

We last watched TV in 1995. It just didn't add anything to our lives.

I remember those days in the early 90s when I came home from work drained. We would have a quick supper and I would sit with my feet propped up in front of the TV. I was too tired to do anything else. Television didn't add anything. In fact, that talking box seemed to take more away. Sitting there made me even more numb. The focus was on somebody way out there in some important place. It was as if the tube was an energy drain. I would sit there with whatever little energy I had and the tube would extract that little I had left. I was almost paralyzed in front of the constant drone of hype and spin, heightened emphasis on violence and sex, advertisements telling me that my family and I weren't quite right without some magical material fix. Yes, we enjoyed a few programs on special channels. For the most part, it was time for TV to go.

In the mid 90s, Richard and I had 2 students who literally carried their TV out of their basement apartment. At that time, such a thing was just not done, especially by young people. With that simple revolutionary action, they planted seeds in us. Why couldn't we do the same? So we cut the cable and just quit watching it. We kept the box around for occasional special movies we carefully screened.

Some magical things happened. We read more. We talked more. We played more. We gardened more. We spent more time in nature. We oriented furniture at our windows and we oriented our yard so we could be present in nature any time we wanted. We would sit at either of the 2 big windows with our cups of tea and observe the birds, squirrels, butterflies, snowflakes, and seasons 24-7.

I am proud to report that Nature has returned in our lives to Her proper place as the original big screen TV. She is free. Her availability came as a benefit of our birth. She has resolution you would not believe and is 3-D to boot. She features a wider screen than one can comprehend. She even offers not just visual and audio but drama for other senses as well. She continuously plays on more channels than we can know. The drama is incredible and often it is subtle, so you have to watch carefully in ways we never knew we could.

By contrast, human contrived television gave us blinders to focus solely on human contrived existence and a script someone else wrote. Being present in Nature opens us to who we are meant to be. We are part of Nature, rather than separate from Her. With this little adjustment, our lives were still busy, but balance, groundedness, peace and tranquility were more evident. At long last, we had begun a journey to come home to who we were meant to be.