I don’t know.
I have (at least three) friends who not only disdain chronic television-viewing, they don’t own a TV. (I guess the italics express the degree of my surprise.) When I am with any of these people, I feel more than a little bit guilty, especially because I spend so much time glued to the screen.
For example, right now I am watching Anderson Cooper, who is discussing eating choices: what they are; why we make the ones we do, and how we can change our eating patterns. Anderson, for example, is a “selective disordered eater” (attached to being thin and losing weight, sometimes leading to death through anorexia). Anderson’s father died young of a heart attack, and Anderson is afraid that he, too, will succumb to a cardio-vascular accident. His dad died when Anderson was ten, and his (Anderson’s) eating patterns began when he (Anderson...sigh) was eleven.
This explains my love of mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, hickory sticks, pan-fried potatoes, potato chips, roasted potatoes and French fries. Hello mother!
Oh – coincidence, as Anderson tells us we are about to meet a woman who has spent fifty years subsisting on nothing but French fries and hash browns. I can’t wait to hear what we’re going to learn about her, this woman who never eats vegetables and has never (ever?) tasted meat. Apparently, she has been this way all of her life.
Her diagnosis?
Potatoes are often comforting, sedating foods. Serotonin in the brain is mostly carbohydrate, and helps us distract from those things that make us nervous. We feel soothed and calmed when we eat these foods. There is also a physiological part to this woman’s eating patterns, which the specialist knows because of early pattern origins.
Fortunately, the diagnostician says, the body is adaptive. It can take a little and make it go a long way. But ultimately, the body will break down if we do not introduce new foods.
Anyway, I am digressing, but I do think the above illustrates what I can get from watching television. (Paranoid and guilty.) (I’m so funny.)
Speaking of humour, I once read that the best disease preventative is laughter, and that a person who laughs one hundred times a day is far healthier than the person who doesn’t. I tune into The Big Bang Theory every day for this express purpose, a sitcom that is good for at least 25 laughs per episode. And I watch other programs (Modern Family; Ellen; South Park; French and Saunders; Little Britain; Newhart; Jon Stewart; Raymond) for the same reason. They make me happy. They make me laugh.
And yes, I know I could be reading instead. And I do read. I volunteer at the CNIB, in part so that I have to keep reading. I am in a book club for a similar purpose. But when I pick up a great book, I cannot seem to put it down. I spend the entire day, and night, turning page after page after page. The cats don’t get fed, the chores don’t get done, and even the time I typically take to dash to the potato chip store at the corner is cut into. (Bad grammar, but I blame that on angst.)
As for writing that book that I have been chipping away at forever, yes, I could be doing that instead of scribbling (okay, typing) another blog entry. But let’s face it: if it’s readers I’m after, I have plenty right here (thank you so much). And if it’s about messages and meanings that I ought to be sharing, I have had generous feedback that reminds me I am not wasting my time here today.
Novel-writing (not to be confused with novel writing, which is not the sort of novel-writer I am), when based on what we know (and what novel-writing isn’t based on what we know?) takes time. I simply cannot bring my thoughts and heart to the page in those ways every day because I find it too emotionally difficult. More, I tend to do a lot of my writing in my head...which is why (coupled with genetics) my head is gigantic.
Anyway, you see where I am headed (no pun intended). One man’s feast is another man’s famine. While you are out climbing Mount Kilimanjaro—getting healthy, seeing the world, experiencing life— I am here laughing, learning and lounging. Who is to say which life is better than another?
You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto;
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let's call the whole thing off!
George and Ira Gershwin, from Shall We Dance (1937)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7sYNptYjsE&feature=related
