The Eternal Quest

Our family turned a corner this year. We bought a television. After eighteen and half years of marriage, my husband and I made our first television purchase. Don't get me wrong, we've owned televisions, but they were always hand me down TV's. Every few years, friends or family members, who thought that an out dated television was better than no television, would show up with a freebie TV for us. We bought a DVD player and signed up for Netflix. We then, on occasion, watched a movie. We even went so far as to buy an antenna resulting in, count them, five channels. Our children were quick to remind us that two of those five channels were public television, so they barely even counted as television. To add to this change, for the first time ever we now have cable. Now our world is open to 7 million channels or something like that. It's dizzying.

Friends, who have known us for years and years, mock our general ineptitude with a remote control. Last night, on New Year's Eve, we missed the ball dropping in Times' Square because I couldn't figure out how to get out of DVD mode and into cable TV mode swiftly enough. I am stunned at how irritating commercial interruptions are, not to mention, how long they are. I've started having a book handy, so I can read during the 5 and 7 minute commercial breaks. All of the great riches of entertainment that I secretly believed I was missing all those years seem to not really exist. I mean I have 7 billion channels and more often than not there is nothing I want to see. I have heard other people say this, of course, but I didn't believe them.

Isn't that just like me. I think I know what I want, but, it turns out, that wasn't really what I wanted at all. It seems to be engineered into us, to want what we don't have, to strive for what we don't need and when we attain that thing, to be surprised that it doesn't fill the need we feel we have. Philosophers and theologians have decried for centuries that the need in each of us can be filled with an honest connection with the creator of all things, but, being who we are, we have to try a few other things first . We have to be certain those easier things wont work as well at filling the need within our souls. At last, we turn from the material to the eternal, from the easy path to the more difficult path. A path that is a long journey rather than a quick fix.

So this new year, I will continue to try to travel the road less traveled. I will still take a few detours here and there; I know that much about myself. One of them will most certainly be staring at a television with an amazingly clear picture and 7 trillion channels. You never know something great might just come on, but when it doesn't perhaps I will remember where I should be looking.

Peace in the New Year,

Michelle