Filtered

We drink it all in, the images, sounds and words swirling about the modern landscape and filling our minds. Once inside, these images, sounds and words tint our memories, guide our thoughts, drive our feelings, embed themselves into our consciousness.

If we choose well, these external stimuli nourish our minds, sharpening our critical thinking, triggering our creativity, stoking our curiousity. If we choose poorly, these external stimuli deaden our minds, replacing original thoughts with pre-packaged dullness leavened with a laugh track.

It took me more than 30 years to appreciate this. For most of that time, I paid little heed to what I poured into my mind: constructive and destructive inputs mixed into a heady brew both toxic and potent.

It was only after I shut off the TV for good and experienced the withdrawal symptoms of a mind so deadened to original thought that it couldn't bear to be left alone with itself that I realized the damage I was doing to myself. After my TV recovery, I gave up computer and video games, I stopped listening to the idiotic but hypnotic pop music that formed the soundtrack of my life, I cut spectator sports, I started to rue the time I'd spent reading the same book over and over, tired rehashes of the same old conventions in the same old genre forms.

Then, as my mind gradually cleared, and my thoughts started reasserting themselved into my consciousness, I questioned my need to read newspapers and magazines. With all I was getting from them, was I getting understanding? I concluded not. I still follow events, but from afar, waiting for the shine of the new to fade, revealing what's truly worthy of my attention.

And so it goes. I've been erecting these mental filters for almost a decade now, clearing out the clutter, trying to protect my consciousness from being hijacked again.

What do I do with my free time now? I spend a lot of it just thinking. I spend a lot more time actively engaged with my family. I still read and listen to music and go to movies, but I think much harder before deciding what to spend my time with. I write, something I could never find the time to do before. And I still waste a lot of time, but I waste it differently, more likely to lose myself in daydreams.

All this has profoundly changed me. I'm stranger than I ever was. I often don't know what's happening. I'm losing the ability to chat. I no longer value the new. I don't want as much as I used to, probably because I've drastically reduced my exposure to advertising. I don't know what's hot or what's cool, living instead at room temperature. I feel better about myself, although my self-criticism is just as incessant and now much more clear-eyed and penetrating. I'm bursting with ideas. I feel an urge to create, an urge I never really felt before. I care less for what others think. I'm less ironic. I'm less predictable, in both good and bad ways. My feelings are more intense: higher highs, lower lows. It's as though I've lost a layer of mental insulation. I'm more connected with the people I love, more alienated from everyone else.

It could just be that I'm getting old, but I'm not that old yet. Or it could be that I'm finally maturing into the oddity I've been all along, but I wasn't odd like this before. Or maybe I'm regressing into a self-absorbed teen. Or this could all just be another of my conceits, a smugly self-congratulatory delusion of exceptionalism, a mature form of the consciousness pollution that's clouded my head since I was a child.

Whatever, all I know is I feel happier, more aware, more in control and more interested since I turned off, tuned out and dropped back into my life.

P.S. More here.

Comments

[DarkoV]

While I admire your shaking off the shackles of mundanity (tv, computer games & spectator sports), I wonder how you get by with the office or party small talk, which, unfortunately, tend to use these three debilitating activities as their grist.
Or, have you embarked on creating your own society and small talk is one of the deadly sins within that society?

[Diana]

I would LOVE to see a world where small-talk of the pop-culture type didn't - even couldn't - exist.

I'm gonna go daydream about that one for awhile...

[Monjo]

Diana: move to some remote parts of the Amazon. There's people there that have never heard of Britney Spears.

[SwissToni]

They may never have heard of Britney Spears, but they still wear Levis, desire Nike trainers and smoke Marlboro......

Good for you for cutting out all this stuff by the way. One thing though: I'm sure you don't mean to, but you do sound as though you feel just a teensy-weensy bit, well, superior to us poor saps who still watch tv and so on. Maybe you are right to, and we are all brain-dead morons, but each to their own, and all that.

ST

ST

[Outer Life]

You're right, looking back at it there is an unintended tinge of superiority in the post. I just tried to describe what's worked for me but, in the process, I suppose I implied that those who don't do what works for me are polluting their minds. That might be true, or it might not, I don't know. All I know is what worked for me.

[Kris]

I don't see the superiority in the post, not at all. I see someone who has been unshackled and freed from the mundane and immediate. This post could have been framed a wee bit better -- de-emphasizing what has been given up and stressing that which has been gained.

I, too, have been trying to clear my mind for many years. I've learned to love silence. This may sound easy, but my thoughts bounce around in silence. Noise and entertainment, in contrast, harnesses thought. Sometimes my mind takes paths that are marvelously creative and exciting -- other times I scare or disgust myself. I am more sensitive to "pastel" ideas and sensations, not merely the demanding, colorful ones. From the mountains of Arizona, I am finally far from the maddening crowd. I'll never come down.

I just discovered this blog today. What a treat!

K

[Farah]

I cut off a lot of the tv kind of stuff a while ago, because I started to notice that a night with a book made me feel relaxed and cheerful, while a night with tv or email made me cranky. Similarly, my depression turned out to be stimuli linked. If I "re-read" too much, I start to spiral downwards.

I discovered this blog today as well. Thanks Lazygal