Planting seeds of hope and love...or not.

I admit to being one of those people that gets hooked on a TV show when its content is to my liking.  In my younger years science fiction appealed to me the most with a tendency to not want to miss any episodes of the Lost in Space, and Star Trek television series. Eventually my taste buds grew and I learned to enjoy other genres which planted me in front of the boob tube watching endless hours of M*A*S*H, Cheers, Taxi, Saturday Night Live, and a many other shows that with their whit had the ability to make me laugh all by myself.  If there is one thing that I have to give credit to the entertainment industry, it is their endless source of creativity that manages to transform just a few minutes of fantasy into lifetime experiences.  I find it amazing how fictional characters have been blended into our culture and minds with the rest of our real lives creating an amazing sense of belonging to fictional situations.  Consider how some of these shows and their characters are irreversibly locked into your own sense of who you are in real life.  Who of you from my generation has not heard of Big Bird in Sesame Street and so many of the characters in all of those shows that we have watched throughout time?  If you want to refresh your memory go to CrazyAboutTV.com and take a peek at an amazing list that will light up the neurons in your brain and make you remember a lot more than you can on your own.  Compared to today’s standards, television shows from our era were simple and unsophisticated.  Today’s technological advances have created many television shows into movie going experiences.  When I sit myself down to watch episodes of CSI, Lost, House, Criminal Minds, Bones, Fringe, and many others, I am blown away with the degree of complexity and amount of research that must take place in order to create a single episode.

A favorite show that I watch for which I am constantly being teased about because of my ability to be able to spew out the lines that are about to be said by the characters is Two and a Half Men.  A few years back I took the plunge and decided to add to my list of favorite gadgets a digital video recorder, or as they are more commonly known, a DVR.  Being able to rent it for a few bucks a month instead of having to buy one, made it much easier for me to make the decision of owning one in my home.  The gadget is an extremely easy to use recording device that allows you to quickly select anything and everything that you want to have recorded to watch at a later time.  This toy is a wonderful thing to have if you are as busy as I am in my life and can almost never be in front of a TV when any favorite show is scheduled in real time.  At the end of my day, as I am ready to relax, I simply turn on the TV and DVR and peek at all the shows that got recorded and then decide which one I want to watch, with the added advantage of being able to fast forward through any annoying commercials, pausing to answer any phone calls or kid’s request, and save to finish watching if I fall asleep from and exhausting day.  Almost every day at least three 30 minute episodes of the above mentioned show gets recorded on my DVR, which when you skip through the commercials only add up to an hour of watch time.  The dysfunctional interactions of the lives of the two brothers and son in this show are just hilarious.  The writers have managed to build characters that when placed into all sorts of real life circumstances typically say many of the things that we ourselves are thinking yet manage to censor in our own lives.  In a recently shown repeat episode, Charlie, the brother who lives pretty much a free spirit careless kind of lifestyle is in the process of escorting out of his home a previous night female conquest when the young beautiful lady says on her way out the door “I think I love you Charlie Harper,” for which he simply answers “Thank you!”  Obviously this honest yet self-indulgent reply sets horribly in the mind of the young lady and after a few queries from her part for clarification, and some even more brutally honest yet horribly selfish replies on his end, she quickly curses him out of her life and leaves in total disgust and anger.  Who could blame her, right?  Yet at the same time, who could blame him?  After all, should he of said “I love you too” just to make her feel good even thought their relationship was based on a single night together?

I am far from an expert on the impact that is caused on a person when their emotional needs are not being met in a romantic relationship.  However, it is not that difficult for me to be able to tell when my own actions hurt the emotional expectations of those around me.  In real life we do not live from one short 30 minute television episode to another, hardly.  The actions that we take, the words that we pick, in essence our entire lives are filled with moments that could have the ability to nourish the lives of those that surround us, or simply not.  It is truly our choice to make if we live our lives from moment to moment planting seeds of hope and love, or not.  I have spent the better part of my parenting days trying to make sure that my children understand that regardless of what happens in their or my life throughout time, the one consistent and never waving thing that they can count on from me is my love.  There is no secret recipe that I need to follow from any parenting book of instructions because I learned this lesson at a very early age with the unwavering example of my own parents.  Through the years my mother and father slowly perfected the selection of all the right ingredients and portions that were required to create the sweetest love potion a child could ever need to feel blessed.  Not once in my entire life have I ever felt not loved.  When I compare how this simple matter of fact statement plays in contrast with many of the lives of the people that surround me, I feel as if I am the luckiest man in the world because of the certainty that this boundless source of love has provided me throughout my entire life.  How could I then, in all fairness not return the same degree of caring for the people that matter to me in my life?

To me life sometimes seems in many ways like a dramatic television series, with all of its ups and downs.  At moments I also feel as if I was merged inside of a comedy show with all of the crazy things that happen to me and all around me from day to day.  However, I do not have a choice in my life that allows me to select the parts that I want to or don't want to live or experience.  I cannot skip through the moments that annoy me like I am able to do when I fast forward my DVR during the commercials.  In essence, I must watch the entire show, commercials and all, and in the process I might as well enjoy it since regardless of how exciting or boring it can get at times, it is my life to live.  You might want to consider that while you too might find yourself wishing someone would of said things differently, behaved better, or simply given you more of what you felt you needed to be whole, it could serve you well to play your part as well as you possibly can in order to not cause others the same discomfort that was caused to you.  Becoming bitter because of tough moments serves absolutely no purpose other than to make things worse in your life.  I for one prefer to be able to look back when I rewind my own life and feel proud of my efforts to become a better father, a better man, a better human being, than having a bucket of regrets instead.

In the end, if I do not lose my mind, I should be able to remember most of the events of my life when I exit this world.  In many ways I think that I am my toughest judge, since I know everything that I have done right and wrong throughout time.  How will I judge my entire life in the end?  Hopefully by the seeds that I have planted and may be able to eventually see grow in those that surround me, especially my children.  If in the end, when my boys grow up to be men, they are able to find inside themselves the seeds of hope and love that I have planted with all my heart, they should grow up to be good men, amazing men, outstanding men.  This is why I do what I do for my children, it is my job.

Dad