Today’s been a ride. A lurching, inconsistent, weirdly-edited ride. I have had many days over the last few months that have been like this. Certainly more than average from my recent memory. And I keep returning to the thought:
“Sometimes the TV show just sucks.”
There were years where I’d just zone out during the bad episodes—when the writing felt phoned in, when I didn’t care about the characters, when the pacing was off or the whole thing veered into absurd prisonous melodrama. I’d mentally leave the room, distract myself with psychic busywork, and concern myself (sometimes pathologically) with story beats that were more compelling than what was happening in front of me. Slowly though, I realized: tuning out the dreadful parts doesn’t actually make the show better. It just flattens everything. Even the good scenes lose their meaning when you’ve been numbing yourself through the rest of the season.
Mindfulness teaches us to be present; to feel the emotions your TV show evokes in you without judgement or pretense. This idea has changed my life, but what an immense burden it can feel like; a spiritual contractual obligation to sit through every single episode, knowing that no matter how horrible it feels, the alternative is worse. You have no remote. No skip button that doesn’t splinter off little pieces of your soul. The best you can do is sit there with your eyes propped open, clockwork orange-style, watching the chaos unfold.
Because, ultimately, this is the only show you get. There’s no second channel. No spinoffs. Just this. Your life. The TV show, or oblivion.
We have understandably evolved to believe that we are controlling the plot somehow. If the show is enthralling enough, the stakes high enough, the boundary between you and the POV of the camera dissolves. Some people, slightly more abstracted, will tout the “life is just a video game” mantra – which allows for a certain level of emotional detachment from the destabilizing forces around you. But sometimes, in moments of stillness, you look around and realize that not only are you not this main character you so identify with—there is no controller in your hands. There never was. You’re not in charge. You’re just watching. Or spacing out. Or wishing it were different. You can also certainly yell at the TV if you want. A lot of people do.
If I have one thing for the complaints department, I wish that realizing you’re not steering makes the stakes feel lower. If anything, it just makes them weirder. “Oh great, I still have to feel everything, even if I can’t do anything about it?”
And yet—it’s not like nothing changes in life, or that things don’t get better. I don’t feel stuck in some cosmic rerun, doomed to repeat the same storylines. In fact, the main character of my show is really quite good at growing. She’s getting good at learning how to work with herself, reshape her environment, and sit quietly and peacefully. She spends an enormous amount of energy peeling layers back, tending to old wounds, tracing patterns back to their origins, learning sophistication in her feelings and practicing (and simply being) whole. That process makes for pretty compelling television, in its own funny way. The version of me watching all this unfold in a Google Doc is at least somewhat bemused by this fourth-wall-breaking emotional arc in particular.
I’ve changed more in the past few years than I thought possible. I know myself now in ways I hadn’t since I was a kid. There’s momentum, evolution, movement.
But still—here I am. Sitting at my desk. Irritated with my texting apps. Raw from the fact that being emotionally open with the world has made me vulnerable to all sorts of bizarre new pain I didn’t want. Stuck on the treadmill, grateful to be moving, but also, sometimes, tired of running.
BRONZE FROG 