I Watch TV With My Heart Instead Of My Eyes

There’s nothing like turning on the TV these days to take a break from social media. You flip through the channels and then you can put your hands down. You don’t need to scroll at all once you’ve settled on a program.

The difference between me and most people when watching TV, though, is not only that I do like to watch TV occasionally without a phone in my hand. The other difference is that I watch TV with my heart, not my eyes.

I watch and listen and absorb whatever’s going on in the center of my chest. It’s where the heart is. When it bounces out, I know that somebody has made a funny joke. Somebody has said something interesting. 

When my chest bounces out from watching TV, we have had an enlightening moment. I feel inspired. I feel motivated to do something good. I am touched. I am entertained. I have seen something awe-inspiring.

It is not always this way with TV. It is not always heartening. Sometimes my chest falls. Then I know that something disheartening has happened. Somebody said something offensive. Somebody was rude.

Sometimes the heart needs to fall to bounce back later to a greater degree than before. It is nice to commiserate with somebody’s struggles. But it is nice when they offer a positive message at the end. A glimmer of hope.

My recent revelation has been that being attractive on TV isn’t always heartening for the viewer. Sometimes it seems very narcissistic. I’ve been wondering if at the inception of TV it was considered heartening to viewers to see attractive people on TV.

Maybe attractive people on TV are good for capitalism because they sell a lot of beauty products and more. We all want to look like them by buying things. Honestly, I think people buy a lot of things anyway. And I do think that “ugly” or “basic” people have selling power.

I think a good example of heartening entertainment is the show TMZ. It’s hard for regular people to not be celebrities, so poking fun at them in just the right comedic way can be heartening.

There are both traditionally attractive and seemingly unattractive people in TMZ’s staff. The unattractive people usually seem to get better jokes. The attractive people seem to get no laughs from the other staffers.

Is TMZ today suggesting that ugly people are funnier? That ugly people are more heartening? They are certainly more open to making a wider variety of facial expressions. They sometimes have more comedic hair. The boss himself seems to be an even split between attractive and unattractive.

I relate to the boss, as feeling that I myself am an even split between attractive and unattractive features. People don’t know which way it should go. You can see tension in both of our faces from people not knowing whether to demand that we doll up more or if we are narcissists for trying at all.

Personally, I think that anybody can be heartening. It doesn’t matter how people perceive your level of attractiveness. I think the difference between heartening and disheartening can be very subtle. But I can’t tell the boss from TMZ how to be more heartening. First of all, he already is. More importantly, he is a boss.