My husband and I have chosen to live without regular television for quite some time now. We have for years limited our TV to DVD’s but the arrival of Netflix opened a whole new vista for us. We could watch some of the TV shows we were interested in whenever we wanted and without commercials. We could recapture old memories by watching the series of years long past as well as keeping up with newer ones.
There is a catch- when you can watch a whole season one episode after another without having to wait the customary week it can take some real discipline to turn it off. When we were introduced to the series “24”, we missed a lot of sleep!
I have also found that unlike the variety you are naturally exposed to on regular television, it was more likely that I found myself watching shows to match my moods. I spent one dark dreary winter watching dark dreary shows. I watched a number of seasons of Intervention and Hoarders. Finding myself fascinated with the human psyche I delved even deeper.
I turned to Deadly Women, Wicked Attraction, Real Interrogations and a number of other true life crime series. I started putting the patterns together as I watched the destruction of human beings. I found myself more interested in the perpetrators than the victims. I felt that the question I had always asked, “How did they get that way?” was being answered as I pieced puzzle pieces together.
The formula seems to be the same- horrific childhoods + neglected teens = twisted adults. Deeply hurt children turn to drugs and alcohol to ease the pain. They need more and more to get the same high. They turn to petty crimes to support their habit. They fall deeper and deeper into the abyss until nothing is off limits anymore.
Or the formula leads them to sex as their drug. As with other drugs, they need more and more to get their “fix”. The acts become more and more depraved until torture and murder is all that excites them.
There is another formula- violence begets violence, unresolved anger begets rage and another generation of abusers up the ante. It spills out and spreads like a virus.
But there is something I know that few of the shows talked about. I know that regardless of the formula of our lives, we still had choices to make and it was those choices that determined the road we took. Are these choices harder for those who have never known another way? Absolutely yes!!! But is it impossible? Were those choices removed from us because of the traumas in our lives? I say NO.
I say no because I have read the life stories of people who managed to change the formulas they were stuck in. I say no because of the people caught in war torn countries all over the world and throughout time that held on to their humanity and refused to be caught by the formulas. I say no because of the numbers of people I have met personally, through media and in the pages of books who were raised in homes and circumstances that make our skins crawl and yet, they refused to stay stuck in the pattern.
I say no because as I watched these shows I saw myself. I realized that at different times in my life I was on the edge of that abyss and ready to become a statistic. I say no because my life followed the formulas but I chose to break them. I came to the understanding that truly but for the grace of God I could have ended up like anyone I was watching. I want others to know that we do not have to be defined by the things that have happened to us. We can be more than that. Take the road less traveled. The views are spectacular!That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?
There is a catch- when you can watch a whole season one episode after another without having to wait the customary week it can take some real discipline to turn it off. When we were introduced to the series “24”, we missed a lot of sleep!
I have also found that unlike the variety you are naturally exposed to on regular television, it was more likely that I found myself watching shows to match my moods. I spent one dark dreary winter watching dark dreary shows. I watched a number of seasons of Intervention and Hoarders. Finding myself fascinated with the human psyche I delved even deeper.
I turned to Deadly Women, Wicked Attraction, Real Interrogations and a number of other true life crime series. I started putting the patterns together as I watched the destruction of human beings. I found myself more interested in the perpetrators than the victims. I felt that the question I had always asked, “How did they get that way?” was being answered as I pieced puzzle pieces together.
The formula seems to be the same- horrific childhoods + neglected teens = twisted adults. Deeply hurt children turn to drugs and alcohol to ease the pain. They need more and more to get the same high. They turn to petty crimes to support their habit. They fall deeper and deeper into the abyss until nothing is off limits anymore.
Or the formula leads them to sex as their drug. As with other drugs, they need more and more to get their “fix”. The acts become more and more depraved until torture and murder is all that excites them.
There is another formula- violence begets violence, unresolved anger begets rage and another generation of abusers up the ante. It spills out and spreads like a virus.
But there is something I know that few of the shows talked about. I know that regardless of the formula of our lives, we still had choices to make and it was those choices that determined the road we took. Are these choices harder for those who have never known another way? Absolutely yes!!! But is it impossible? Were those choices removed from us because of the traumas in our lives? I say NO.
I say no because I have read the life stories of people who managed to change the formulas they were stuck in. I say no because of the people caught in war torn countries all over the world and throughout time that held on to their humanity and refused to be caught by the formulas. I say no because of the numbers of people I have met personally, through media and in the pages of books who were raised in homes and circumstances that make our skins crawl and yet, they refused to stay stuck in the pattern.
I say no because as I watched these shows I saw myself. I realized that at different times in my life I was on the edge of that abyss and ready to become a statistic. I say no because my life followed the formulas but I chose to break them. I came to the understanding that truly but for the grace of God I could have ended up like anyone I was watching. I want others to know that we do not have to be defined by the things that have happened to us. We can be more than that. Take the road less traveled. The views are spectacular!That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?
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