Television as a habit

Yesterday I asked you what you were reading, well today I'd like to talk to you about your TV viewing habits. Did I say habits - yep that word again.
 
Do you own a television?
How many?
How many are on at any given time of the day?
What are you watching? Do you watch the same programs each week?
How many hours a day do you sit down and stare intently at the tiny screen?
How many hours a week does that equate to?
 
Now I need you to be honest - you don't need to tell me - you need to tell yourself
 
What are you not doing when you are watching the television?
 
Am I saying that watching television is bad? Not at all, if you've done everything else you should have done. Do you have children? Do you insist they do their homework before they get to watch their favourite shows? Are you being a little hypocritical then if you sit and watch your tv shows when you haven't done "your homework"?
 
A couple of things about the television.
 
The news is full of doom and despair - how do you feel when you've finished watching the news? Happy, ready to get up and get going, fired with enthusiasm? No, me neither. Lets face it bad news sells and for the politicians who want to be re-elected - a great way to feed negative thoughts into the minds of the public. Did you notice before the last election - how the terror alerts went up - then miraculously they almost disappeared off the screens once the election was over....funny that....OK you can call me cynical if you want to, but the pattern was interesting.
 
And for the rest of the programs, well really they are a sanitized form of life. We are removed from the happenings. We can't smell the food being cooked, we certainly can't taste it, we can't feel the breeze on our skin, or hear the tiny rustle of creatures walking in the undergrowth - we are reliant on the skill of the presenters, the camera and sound crew and the actors to portray "life" to us.
 
But what do all these people in television have in common?
 
Earning lots of money perhaps? Well maybe!
But the one that I was thinking of - is they are all living their dreams. They are doing what they love, what they enjoy, they are living their lives to the absolute max and they are having the times of their lives.
 
What are we doing? We are watching other people living their lives, we are not living our own....well and this should not come as a surprise to you - life is not a spectator sport, life is a participation sport.
 
So my final question for today - what would you do if you couldn't watch the television? Say some nasty person went into your house and removed all the plugs. Yes the machines are still there, but there's no power. Would you rant and rave and find a spare plug and put it back together? Would you drive to the local hardware store and buy one - if you couldn't find one in the house? Of course you would. Television has become such an ingrained part of our lives, that we can't live without it....TV has become a habit. A bad habit.
 
Do I watch television? Yes, I do. But I don't watch the the news, or current affairs programs. But I only watch the TV after I've done my homework. Does that mean that sometimes I don't watch the television at night - the answer is yes. How on earth do you think I find time to write as much as I do?
 
Well my final thoughts for the day are this - we all find time to do what we want to do....and that is - 
what goes into the mind comes out of the mouth. So if your conversations revolve around who did what on which show, then my suggestion - turn the damn thing off and start living your own dreams. Go on, you will be amazed at how much more you can achieve, and you will be ahead of most of the rest of the population out there.