My family's life has been turned upside down the last week or so. Our TV watching habits have changed recently and, frankly, we're tapping on each other's nerves.
We're on vacation. Primarily, our vacation is a road trip (yes, with these gas prices) and we're camping in several different places across the American west. But for the last few days, we've been parked in the foothills of the Sierras at the home of our good family friends. The views are wonderful, the air is clear, and just over the crest behind the house lies Yosemite Valley.
But no one notices. They're too busy looking at the brand new 46-inch HDTV complete with surround sound. This TV is amazing. Absolutely amazing. At times the picture quality borders on the disturbing. In the middle of a dramatic scene, you find yourself staring at and remarking on the beads of sweat running down the actor's face. And the TV is on all the time. It comes on when our friends wake up in the morning as a sort of clocking-in on the day and only shuts off when the last person is in bed.
This is a big difference for my family. My wife and our two young daughters have been living without TV for the last year. We watch the occasional movie, and my wife and have one show we do watch on the Internet, but on the whole, we have zero TV throughout our week.
Our friends don't have kids. But they do have a TV in every bedroom. None of them are as impressively appointed as the main TV, but they're there and they're hooked up to service and DVD players and everything else. Since our kids don't have playmates here and we've been spending time visiting with our friends whom we rarely get to see, this has sent our kids into a funk of TV watching.
It started out simply enough, as these things often do. But TV has a hypnotic quality; there is a feeling of calm that your body experiences while watching TV that goes away when it is turned off. It leaves behind a feeling of agitation and anxiety when the TV goes off. On a biological level, your body knows that the feeling of relaxation will change to agitation and it resists any impulse you might have to turn the TV off.
So in the last day or so, our daughters have been watching far too much TV, and we hadn't done nearly enough to dissuade them from watching. And today I decided that I missed my daughters and that I'd like to spend time with them. They had started bickering, fighting, yelling, and whining whenever we talked about doing something besides watching TV.
Finally, we dragged them outside. They protested, but we insisted that we go on a family adventure. We climbed the hill above the house (carrying the girls most of the way) and finally landed on a big granite rock with a beautiful view of the valley below us. The four of us talked and watched the birds and finally our older daughter discovered the magic of an echo.
It was just the four of us, our family. Lying on the rock, talking and laughing, surrounded by nature, we felt like we were home all of a sudden.
Next week, we'll be camping along the coast for a week. Our world will go back to peaceful normality. Without the distraction of television, our family finds time for each other; we know how to enjoy each other's company. We love our friends and we don't judge them on their lifestyle, but it's very reaffirming for us. It doesn't matter how wonderful the TV set is, or how clear the picture. Nothing could beat that view from the rock above the valley at that particular time inour family's growth.
