Monday, March 3, 2008

Reality: Not on the TV

There are times when I really love reality TV shows. I watched several seasons of The Apprentice and The Amazing Race was riveting. American Idol is sweeping the nation, and the episodes are vastly entertaining.

What is the draw of reality TV? Why do we like to watch other people live their lives? It's the good parts. We only have to see the good parts of those TV shows. It's like William Goodman's The Princess Bride: The Good Parts Version. The characters live an entire week, but we only see an hour of that week. How much of the rest of the week is like our own lives, mundane, doing the dishes, or putting the laundry in the washer. Even those people have to eat and sleep like the rest of us. I think that every single person should be able to look at a week, even one of the worst weeks, and pull out at least an hour's worth of "The good parts version" in each one's on life.

I have had the flu for the past week, and today, I finally feel almost human again. Even during that week, I can find an hour's worth of great things that happened. It was a great time for me to be able to cuddle the children and read stories. Jackie and Ben would grab books and climb up on the bed with me. We also colored and played with stickers. It was a very relaxing time just to enjoy each other.

4 comments:

Our Corner said...

I love your idea of "oulling out the good parts." My friend and I have found ourselves noicing all the bad and negative things at work till we realized why we felt bad all the time at work. Now we only find the positive things...or try to . :)

Melissa said...

Glad you're feeling better.

My favorite reality tv is stuff like "Clean House" or "How Clean is Your House?". I always feel better knowing that I'm not as much of a train wreck as they are.

Yeah, I know. Doesn't say nice things about me. But there it is.

le35 said...

Melissa,

Sometimes I'm just as big a train wreck. But also, I feel like in other ways, I have more happy times in my life. I'm working for the happy times.

Robert said...

I'm like Melissa, in a way. I like to watch the shows that fix up a messy house and help people declutter. It helps me see that we're not as bad as some people, and we can get better.