Nip and Tuck my life

Something I wrote a few months ago but never posted, thought I'd share...
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While in the recent past I may have believed that watching TV was a complete waste of time, I guess the truth is it’s what you take AND make of that experience. If we could somehow live vicariously through these characters we watch on TV, we’d learn that we actually lose much more time being idle with our take on our own lives, than sitting in front of the tube.

I just finished watching an episode of Nip Tuck. It was one of those typical episodes that almost every successful television series has where the characters are shown some odd years in the future.

I never saw myself getting into this show to be quite honest. I would always hear about it from people who watched it, but never managed to be able to commit myself to a TV drama (besides the Spanish soap operas I watched with my mom when I was younger). Lo and behold a few years later, who would of imagined that it was actually a goal of mine to sit down and faithfully tune in to a drama at the same hour, of the same day of the week, every week.

That goal was largely motivated by jealousy to be quite honest. I was pretty resentful of people who would have to run home to watch a TV program; the feeling of having some type of emotional attachment and responsibility, to set yourself aside, to set some time aside of YOUR life for a TV program; the thought was kind of amazing.

Almost like some weird romantic relationship.

This episode struck my attention only because one of the characters, 20 years older, finally resolved an internal issue he had been dealing with for all those years. It hit me only because I realized how likely we all are to live everyday of our lives with internal baggage that we never seem to resolve. It becomes terrifying when I think how much of my own issues in the past has gone unresolved for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and at this point, possibly even a decade (all these units of time being all too long to live in avoidance). The truth is when you think about, unfinished business for 20 years is quite possible.
And I just don’t want to be one of those people.

Who looks back at the years before me and can only imagine how my quality life would have been different and how I could have been different, most likely better. How my relationships with people who I care about could have improved. And ultimately how learning to live a life of honesty with myself and other individuals and to have my actions be carried out with this understanding, would allow me to fully capitalize on my power of decision making, (which is thankfully granted to me automatically by my own existence). It’s the only way I can be truly happy. Honesty

It’s my life; so I should listen to myself

I think that’s why in the case of TV dramas, the plot line moves along fairly quickly. It is always the characters’ honesty and bluntness which eliminates the weeks, months, and years of idleness, which we don’t witness in these episodes we watch, yet experience in our lives almost every day. There’s no time for that on TV. The most you’ll get is a few seasons of a character not having confronted themselves. Yet that 1 hour on TV is actually 3 days for the characters, and when we tune in the next week, a month has already passed for them.

That’s when I start to imagine my life on the TV. I imagine how many hours of fruitless footage would be sloughed off of each day, week, and month to make one good episode of TV, and it’s depressing; but only because I choose it to be that way. I choose to remain complacent with living in fear and/or laziness, when I could very well grab my life and squeeze the potential for growth and happiness out every bit of time I have here. Kind of one of those obvious things, but kind not….

By being still I choose to not to move.

I just want to go to sleep every night and feel like I’ve learned something life changing.

That my day wasn’t a waste.