Last night my whole family got together and had dinner instead of watching the "worst" episode of the Bachelorette season. We all felt pretty good about choosing to abstain. Last week when we watched the 2nd episode it took us all about 3 or 4 days to feel better about the whole thing. I remember watching the "Girl's tell all" from last season and Emily saying that every Monday night she and Brad would get in a fight and every Tuesday morning he would send her flowers. There are so many emotions that you feel as you are watching someone you know or care about. I was so upset about last weeks episode, so I quickly agreed to not watch last nights episode when Bentley asked. I am so glad I did. It is much easier to think objectively about everything when ABC doesn't drag your emotions on a roller coaster. I think I would have been an emotional mess this whole week. I have no anger, disappointment, sadness, frustration, depression -all these feelings that I had last week! I feel like my self discipline paid off. It is almost like the show didn't even happen at all for our family. Just the regular normal stuff going on. It's like all the other addictions you can have in life. One can be addicted to physical things like caffeine, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, coffee, and then there are emotional addictions that we often ignore or don't even recognize. I think that emotional addictions are the hardest to figure out and then the hardest to fix. We all have emotional tendencies- anger, sadness, depression, frustration, resentment, jealousy, revenge, etc. Now I know why reality shows are successful and they make tons of money. People connect to these characters (Bentley- the mean villian and Ashley- the insecure victim) through our own emotional addictions. Then after people watch a show like last night they feel justified in saying horrible and cruel things to people they know nothing about bc ABC just played on their "emotions". Stressful situations have a tendency to pull the worst and best sides out of us. After watching last night's episode were you a victim of ABC's emtional ride? Were you angry? Were you ticked off? Were you sad? I know that if I would have watched- I would have been, but that is only bc I am already dealing with other stressful things in my personal life right now. Maybe it would have been just the right amount of crap to throw me over the edge - and maybe I would start attacking other random people that I know nothing about. This whole process has taught me the most about myself. That I need more self discipline in my own life. That I need to be careful about ALL the words that come out of my mouth, at all times, not just if a camera is rolling (which luckily is never in my case:). Bentley is the example here of how we should NOT be in real life. But the reality is that all of us are guilty of a "Bentley" sometime or other. As Christ said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". There surely is no stone in my hand....
Oh and P.S... I think I am going back to watching real TV where the actors get well compensated for their jobs!
