No TV

My new home has no TV reception (yet) and at first I thought, “How can I live there?” I mean, I need the Today Show to wake up to. I need HGVT to fall asleep to, and in between, it’s Food Network for entertainment and inspiration. How can I function without my TV?

It’s day four, and for some reason, I feel strangely liberated. I haven’t gotten much news, which means I haven’t gotten much bad news. I heard that a plane and helicopter collided over the Hudson River, which is terrible news and I felt bad about it, but I didn’t have to watch the grisly scene replayed on CNN or cry during interviews of grieving family members (I always cry in such situations). I’ve heard about town hall meetings where shouting matches have erupted over the Health Care plan, but I didn’t have to watch them and get frustrated. Politics, and politicians, always frustrate me. As for the weather, when I wake up I can see what’s happening and I do listen to NPR on the radio, both in my car and in my new home. It’s not so bad. Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, prescribes a moratorium on print and television news (and I assume, now, internet) for the first few weeks of his get-well program, saying that being bombarded with bad news is bad for our health. I’ve always wanted to incorporate that philosophy but found it virtually impossible because I’m too curious. If the TV is there, I turn it on to see what’s happening in the world. Now I can’t, and oddly, I am feeling better, with a new sense of peace, after just four days. The bad news can get along just fine without me.

Soon enough, there will be TV. If not cable, I’ll have a digital conversion box and there are many channels available there as well, but not the kind of TV I’m accustomed to. I’ll adapt, and I hope I remember that, for a short time, life without TV was just fine.

Photo credit: http://www.marioarmstrong.com/storage/wypr-podcast/no_tv.jpg