Sex

Well over a month ago I did my first Life Experiment to share with this blog.  I turned the television off for one week. Well, I set out to turn it off for one week.  It has never gone back on.  The silence of my apartment has become a haven for me.

But I am not a total purist.  I don't watch TV at home anymore, but it is on in other places.  For example, the group room on our behavioral health floor has a TV were patients gather to watch.  When I am facilitating one of my groups up there I usually hang out for a few minutes watching TV with other patients.

And my gym has four television sets going all of the time.  When I am exercising I usually stare mindlessly at them.  I can't hear them, so I don't really know what is happening, but they are there.

Now, more often than not the televisions are set to one or two local news stations, CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, and ESPN.  On early Saturday morning there are children's cartoons being played as well.  These are all fine stations to have on, nothing too distracting or disturbing.  But not this morning.

This morning one of the sets was on Comedy Central.  But, it was 5am, so it was too early for regular programming and an infomercial was on.  But not just any infomercial, a 30 minute program selling an over-the-counter drug to increase sexual performance or pleasure.  And about 80% for that 30 minutes was taken up with semi-pornographic scenes of people 'enjoying' this medication.

It was 5am!  And on the television I was essentially watching people have sex, while trying to exercise in a room full of strangers.  I was so uncomfortable.

This is the reason I have given up television, because of things like that.  Sex has become a public entertainment.  Something to be sold and traded.  Not only that, people are so casual about public displays of sex that no one even seemed to be noticing or caring.  In fact a number of people were staring at the television program. 

I literally had to avert my eyes.  I felt my space and spirit had been violated.  And I felt sad for our society and what we now utilize for entertainment.

It wasn't just the station with the pornographic images on it.  As I surveyed the four televisions, one appeared to be focusing on celebrity gossip and another was focusing on some sort of sports scandal.  It was only the local news station, with its regular weather update that felt safe to look at.  Everything else was bombarding me with negativity. 

I was so relieved to get back into my car with the sanity and sophistication of NPR, and even more relieved when I re-enter my apartment silence.

I am probably sounding like a prude.  And believe when I say I really am not.  When friends or family want to talk about extremely personal things, I have no problem with that.  When my patients crack off-color jokes, I laugh along with them (as long as they are not offensive to men or women).  But it was the images which were being broadcasted that really started to bother me.

So often I hear people talking about their worries for up-coming generations of Americans.  This morning I too began to worry.  Children and adults are spending so much time in front of television screens, being de-sensitized to violence and losing the understanding of sexual intimacy, I fear we may be losing our sense of self.  What happens to a person's spirit when confronted with that all day long?

I don't have any answers.  I just needed to share my thoughts and concerns.  And tomorrow at the gym I will be better prepared.  I can't turn off the televisions, but at least I can protect my spirit from them.