Michael and I got married 8 years ago. I got Mono while on our honeymoon, and that’s when it started. Watching TV. For weeks on end, my days consisted of dragging myself out of bed to eat breakfast and flop onto the couch to take a three-hour nap. Eating breakfast was exhausting! Then I would shower, and take another nap to recover from the energy spent showering.
I was lonely and bored and TV was something to keep my mind occupied during the many hours of laying on the couch. Michael would often find me comatose as he came in from work in the evenings. Too tired to talk much, we would spend the evening in front of the TV and then go to bed.
I recently heard a statistic that said the average American watches 7 hours of TV a day. I believe it.
As I slowly recovered from mono, I thought my days would no longer include watching TV. I was back to work and around people more, but somehow Michael and I still ended up in front of the TV every evening. It just sat there staring at us… calling us to turn it on! I mean, what else was there to do with our time, right?
Years passed and our evening routine was to eat dinner while watching our shows. There seemed to be something on that we just “had to watch” every night. Time flies when you watch TV. Before we knew it, we were spending 2 or 3 hours a day glued to our TV.
Michael and I recently added up the time we spent watching TV over the first 5 years of our marriage. We figured if we spent an average of 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, we had spent 1 whole year of our waking hours just watching TV. 5,500 hours! Are you kidding me?
What could you do with 5,500 hours? I can think of lots of things:
- I could earn a bachelor’s degree, and that includes study time!
- I could read almost 750 books, and I’m an average reader!
- I could fly back and forth to Australia 95 times!
- I could spend 8 hrs a day for 2 years volunteering at a soup kitchen and feed 146,000 people!
- I could build a successful business that changes the world!
- I could drive across the US 73 times!
- With an average time of 5 minutes per note, I could write 66,000 encouraging notes!
- I could spend a year in Mongolia starting an orphanage!
- I could learn a new language!
I can think of tons more but I’ll leave it at that.
Michael and I phased out of our TV watching by putting it up on the third floor, and then got rid of it all together this past summer. It changed our lives.
Want to change your life? Oust your TV and replace it with… Well, what would you do with an extra 5,500 hours?
I LOVE this! We don’t have a TV, and don’t plan on ever getting one. We had multiple people tell us when we got married not to get a TV for the first year of marriage. They didn’t have anything to worry about!
I still have people ask me what we do all the time since we don’t have a TV. I honestly don’t know how they have the time to watch TV.
You all are doing some things that wouldn’t even be on the radar (I don’t think) if you had not made the decision to get rid of your TV. I hope that others are encouraged to do the same by the example you’re setting!
Ryan,
I like that someone gave you that advice! WISE! I really don’t know how we had time to watch TV either! Actually I remember always feeling like there was never any time to do anything and wondering why that was because we didn’t have any kids yet 😉
Ya, life has taken on a whole new spin without the constant negative content on TV…my mind feels so much free-er! And yes, I am very confident we would still be at the same place we were back then if we had it still.
I hadn’t even mentioned the negative effect that TV has, but I believe that it’s extremely mind-numbing! SO many reasons not to have one!
Nicely said Claudia. With regret that was much of our early years of marriage. It’s almost like you get caught in a bubble and it take a while to see the need to get out of it. I never want to go back to that. Who cares who can’t dance or sign!
Darrin,
True, very true – it is a bubble. A very tricky one that seems lovely inside, but it actually feeds you lies and fills your mind with nonsense chatter so that it looses it capacity to think on it’s own!
We will never go back either!
We’ve lived without one for all our married life (well—we had one in Chile but no channels, it was for watching dvds). Living without it is good for the whole family!! 🙂
Wow, Sarah I love that! And I agree… good for the whole family 🙂
I want all of the hours that I wasted watching sitcoms when I was in School.
haha Jason, I hear ya… nothing better to do right? 😉
I was pretty dull! No good mentors. 🙁
Oh dear… well, now you are an adventure seeker, living and loving life!
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