Anybody who knows me even a little bit knows I am a fan of TV. I watch about seven programs religiously with the help of my TiVo, a computerized video recorder known as a DVR. Figure in following my favorite sports teams, watching games that are interesting, and sports related programming like SportsCenter on ESPN, and my total TV time can grow to levels not usually deemed acceptable. Adding to this grand total is the new acquisition of Netflix, an on-demand video service that allows me to watch whatever available show/movie I want whenever I want. All in all TV is a fairly consistent presence in my down time.
Now that you get the general gist of things, you can understand my despair upon discovering one November day that the TV had died. Given up the ghost and where my sitcoms and endless sports coverage once was proudly displayed was a momentary field of thin blue lines followed by nothing. No amount of smacking and pounding brought the picture back.
Being that this is a January Newsletter- the first letter of the year - you might be prone to think I am going to say something like “I decided we would go without the TV and spend more time together as a family” or perhaps “I put the broken TV in the garage and have now spent the time I used to watch TV reading.” You would have a fair amount of justification for such an assumption. January newsletters, blogs, sermons, and other transmissions are often full up with pity stories of turning a new leaf and discovering the benefits of starting afresh in the newly minted year. Advertisers bank on such a spirit blowing through the culture, and now that it is January I can bet each of us has received or heard something about the low rates at our local gym or Jenny Craig. Something in the way we do business as a society provides the first month of the year to make, to start, to promise, or to commit to do something that would seem to make life better. The term we tend to use is a “New Year’s Resolution.” I think that it is bogus.
It wasn’t 12 hours before I hauled our 2nd TV down to the basement & within minutes had everything hooked up and ready to go. Sure, I could have taken up reading in the place of TV. I could have spent my time learning the art of French Cuisine, learning how to work on my car, or brushing up on my fading Spanish language skills but I didn’t. I plugged the TV in and got back on the couch.
Going from TV to no TV would be a radical change in my life; a radical change which would almost certainly result in epic failure. The key would be a step down approach. Now that the College Football season is over, don’t watch TV on Saturdays. That is something I could live with. Incremental, baby-steps, slowing chipping away at the excuses and variables can over time lead to an ingrained habit. The same is true for someone’s spiritual life. Nobody wakes up on January 1st and says, “I am going to be spiritual now.” Or if they do, it isn’t met with much success. Like anything else cultivating a habit takes repeated exposure over and over again. Setting aside a five minute window to be still and silent is more doable than a weekend of silent meditation, and saying a prayer while the car warms up is a lot more productive than saying you are going to read the Bible cover to cover and then not doing it.
In the end life is about creating habits. What we begin slowly now can lead to a rich life in the future. Like deciding to run a marathon, you start running a mile before you tackle all 27. If a deeper connection and relationship with God is something that you desire for your years to come then lose the New Year’s Resolution and begin small.
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