Risky Business... Living in an Age of Endless Entertainment

I could not find my MP3 player for about two weeks. To boot, there is some electrical problem with the radio in my car and I have just not gotten around to getting it fixed or replaced. So when I am away from the house, I have had far fewer distractions that make it difficult just to hear myself think. And being able to do that, I think is a very important aspect of our lives.

I have written earlier about the danger of starting to live on auto-pilot. What that means is that if we get so busy in our lives, so overwhelmed with things to do and places to be and not enough time to get eveything done, we just start living without any introspection at all. That is a dangerous thing to do, because we might get lost in our own lives.

Anyway, when I found my MP3 player again a couple of days ago, I started chilling out to the music, when I was walking or en route somewhere. Today, as I was walking my Yorkie, Spike, I caught myself thinking that I need to set some time aside, in a quiet place where I can take stock of how my day has gone, of how things are going in general in my life... if the things I am doing now and the direction my life is taking is satisfying and is enabling me to be comfortable with my life.

Unconsciously, I believe I have made the decision to limit the amount of time I spend on being "entertained" no matter what form that entertainment might take. I am painfully aware that there are a lot of people out there who want to entertain me for a price, either in cash or time spent. That is how they make a living and they want me to be one additional in there ratings stats. You know what? I really want to stop being viewed as only part of some tv show's or some movie's or even some recording artist's rating stats. Frankly I want to more than that. For me vegging out in front of the boob tube no longer seems like such an attractive option.

I don't want to get in the habit of living my life in a mindless sort of way. I want to be aware of where I am, of what I am doing with my time and of the direction my life is taking. Unlike our esteemed President Bush, I don't think it is such a great idea to just stay the course, no matter what, or worse yet to not even be aware of what course I am on from day to day.
So I return to my blog once again to give an update of what my mind is ruminating on at this moment. I just feel more alive when I am actively doing something useful, even if it is only washing the dishes, than when I am when my mind gets locked into what is on television at the moment. I tend to become something of a zombie when that happens.

We live in a dangerous age, the age of an endless stream of noisy entertainment coming at us from every direction, screaming for our attention. I don't know about you, but I need that time during which I just take stock of my life at the moment. Without it, I am very much at risk of just starting to drift from day to day, mindlessly. The real danger is that one day I would wake up and have no idea where a large chunk of my life has gone and mourn the fact that I will have squandered even a small part of my life. I am not willing to live that way. And I would respectfully suggest to you that you can't either.

So I will continue to turn off the television set, unless there is something really compelling for me to watch. I will limit the time I spend on other forms of entertainment, including what the evening news broadcast is trying to pass off as legitimate news. I think in this decision I am on the right track. I have things I want to accomplish before I make my final exit.