I’m almost ready to clear out the garage. It’s on the schedule for this week. I usually have to let these bigger tasks foment for a while before getting them started. Fomenting can take years…
There’s still plenty left to do on my everlasting “to do someday” list, even after all of these months at home. Clean out the closet, organize the tools, finish those recordings, clear up all the overflowing paper around me. But it feels good to occasionally cross something off the list. This week I set up a new television that’s been sitting in the living room last Christmas, which definitely feels like years ago. It’s satisfying to organize chaos. The living room looks larger to me, like it’s not even my house.
A minor task, if long overdue. The world is falling apart and Rankin is putting in a TV. A metaphor perhaps, about jumping even deeper into the digital hole?
In some ways, yes. There’s way more content than anyone could watch in a thousand lifetimes. It makes me think for a moment that life is improving in some ways. Maybe we don’t like all the changes, but we do appreciate some new things. Digital junk food doesn’t fill you up (and that is a metaphor), but it’s gotten more enticing. You can look at picture of a steak for years and not know what it tastes like, but it’s a much better picture.
The same with news. It’s focused on what’s wrong, and too often there are opposing opinions presented as facts. Good thing we have social media or we’d never know what’s true…
The real world is not as polarized and unforgiving as media claims. Everybody is important and needs to be treated with respect, as we want to be treated ourselves. And if you don’t believe that, then do it because your mama would want you to.
And I didn’t learn that from television.