Filtering Junk from my Brain
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Thursday, February 10, 2005
From what little I know of my sister-in-law, and from the small amount of time we've spent together, she seems to have an amazing capacity for filtering out junk, and making sure that her girls are raised with only meaningful things. No stupid meaningless cartoons. I agree!! I silently applauded Heather when Spongebob came on, she changed the channel without hesitation. Everyone else in the room grumbled and thought she was such a square. Well, you know what? It's OK to be a square, if being square means that her daughters grow up with good values, and save their brain space for much more meaningful things. That's FANTASTIC! I wouldn't want it any other way.
I want to make wise edu-tainment choices for my little guy because there are so many forms of entertainment geared toward children that are completely inappropriate, and subtly damaging. Subtle damage can snowball into serious damage. Believe me; I'm a product of it.
I am very sensitive to what goes on around me. I absorb everything. And that's not always good because there is a lot of trash in the world. I don't want to absorb it, but I do anyway!
Years ago I learned how to filter out the trash and absorb only the good. It's HARD TO DO.
When I was 20, I sold all of my secular music, got rid of any possessions that were even remotely uninspiring, started going to church and ALL the activities, made new friends...started living off of Deseret Book (clean books, movies, music, etc.).
But once I let my guard down, the trash started gradually eeking its way back in. I think it's when I first bought a car, I felt so free and independent...I turned on the radio, a media that I'd been cleansed of years before...and I was shocked at every little thing that I heard. You know, even little innocent love songs are tainted with garbage sometimes. And of course there are the blatantly filthy songs. Well, I thought it wouldn't affect me, so for ambient background noise, I kept it on. And day after day, drive after drive, the music, the useless "news" that is most often bad news and is so damaging to my soul; I just kept it on. Ugh. Finally discovered NPR. A year too late though.
If I could purge my mind of all the useless song lyrics I've memorized over my lifetime, and replace them with meaningful things, what a wonderful thing that would be. I wish I'd memorize scriptures, for example. But having joined the Church after high school, which is when the kids go to seminary and memorize scriptures, I missed the boat on that. I'll have to coach myself on scripture memorization. What a sweet way that would be to fill idle brain time!
Marrying John didn't help me much with my "filtering" efforts either. I don't blame him for damaging me though. I am very impressionable. I make my own damaging choices by exposing myself to bad things. So with John came his ceaseless "Simpsons" episodes, rated R movies...I sat with him and watched ........ (can't remember the name of the movie)......and I felt awful through it, and finally burst into tears during the scene where an expectant father who's finally trying to make an honest living outside of the porn industry goes into a convenience store and finds himself in the middle of a shootout. A new daddy! His poor baby! His poor pregnant wife waiting outside for him in the car!
It was too much for me. I rushed into the bedroom, crying so hard, I picked up my bible, turned to the first page, the introduction to the King James version, and simply read right there, not having the strength to search for any particular passage. I just wanted to hold something good in my hands, and read anything inspiring. I cried even harder just reading the introduction, feeling it so contrastingly inspired to what I'd just run away from in the living room. I felt the Lord speaking to me through those words, with love and solemnity. It brought me back to what is fundamentally important. By then John had turned off the movie and come back to be with me, and I just cried, and tried to read aloud to him what had affected me so much, and I just cried. He didn't get it. He eventually talked me into watching the rest of the movie with him. I am so stupid.
I know it's not his fault. I am free to make choices. I just make dumb ones. John's become a little more sensitive to my entertainment preferences; at least he tries to keep his crap entertainment to himself these days.
I don't want Michael growing up with trash in his household!!! PERIOD! I'm not being oversensitive. We live in a really messed-up world, and the only way to keep sanity in it is to filter out the junk, and replace it tenfold with good things. I guess the "good things" aren't so entertaining to people whose senses have been numbed and ripped apart by trash entertainment.
Oh, gosh, I've got so much more I want to say on this subject... Filtering...
Being a damaged and broken girl, I need to start from scratch. So to begin the healing process, ideally I would love to filter out EVERYTHING except 1) honest, hard work; and 2) religion.
I don't like the word "religion" because it's got a long history of stigma and mixed-up ideas associated with it. So for this purpose, I'm defining "religion" as follows. I want to:
1) Read the scriptures, study them, pore over them, learn from them, apply them to my life;
2) Attend all my church meetings, and sign up for every service opportunity I can bear;
3) Get to know people, get to love them, truly care about them, and serve them. As soon as my most fundamental needs are met, use every spare moment in service to others.
I'm serious. Just those two things. Honest, hard work, and religion. Everything else will fall into place, and whatever else has been occupying my time will fall by the wayside, giving way to a better way.
Yes, the Lord's people are a peculiar people. I want to be peculiar. I wish I could be. I want to try.
See, I say all these things to convince myself that I want to be a good person. Then what'll I do? Wake up in the morning groggy and lazy, turn on the TV, and watch Oprah.
I hate being me!
posted by Angela Marie at 1:52 AM
From what little I know of my sister-in-law, and from the small amount of time we've spent together, she seems to have an amazing capacity for filtering out junk, and making sure that her girls are raised with only meaningful things. No stupid meaningless cartoons. I agree!! I silently applauded Heather when Spongebob came on, she changed the channel without hesitation. Everyone else in the room grumbled and thought she was such a square. Well, you know what? It's OK to be a square, if being square means that her daughters grow up with good values, and save their brain space for much more meaningful things. That's FANTASTIC! I wouldn't want it any other way.
I want to make wise edu-tainment choices for my little guy because there are so many forms of entertainment geared toward children that are completely inappropriate, and subtly damaging. Subtle damage can snowball into serious damage. Believe me; I'm a product of it.
I am very sensitive to what goes on around me. I absorb everything. And that's not always good because there is a lot of trash in the world. I don't want to absorb it, but I do anyway!
Years ago I learned how to filter out the trash and absorb only the good. It's HARD TO DO.
When I was 20, I sold all of my secular music, got rid of any possessions that were even remotely uninspiring, started going to church and ALL the activities, made new friends...started living off of Deseret Book (clean books, movies, music, etc.).
But once I let my guard down, the trash started gradually eeking its way back in. I think it's when I first bought a car, I felt so free and independent...I turned on the radio, a media that I'd been cleansed of years before...and I was shocked at every little thing that I heard. You know, even little innocent love songs are tainted with garbage sometimes. And of course there are the blatantly filthy songs. Well, I thought it wouldn't affect me, so for ambient background noise, I kept it on. And day after day, drive after drive, the music, the useless "news" that is most often bad news and is so damaging to my soul; I just kept it on. Ugh. Finally discovered NPR. A year too late though.
If I could purge my mind of all the useless song lyrics I've memorized over my lifetime, and replace them with meaningful things, what a wonderful thing that would be. I wish I'd memorize scriptures, for example. But having joined the Church after high school, which is when the kids go to seminary and memorize scriptures, I missed the boat on that. I'll have to coach myself on scripture memorization. What a sweet way that would be to fill idle brain time!
Marrying John didn't help me much with my "filtering" efforts either. I don't blame him for damaging me though. I am very impressionable. I make my own damaging choices by exposing myself to bad things. So with John came his ceaseless "Simpsons" episodes, rated R movies...I sat with him and watched ........ (can't remember the name of the movie)......and I felt awful through it, and finally burst into tears during the scene where an expectant father who's finally trying to make an honest living outside of the porn industry goes into a convenience store and finds himself in the middle of a shootout. A new daddy! His poor baby! His poor pregnant wife waiting outside for him in the car!
It was too much for me. I rushed into the bedroom, crying so hard, I picked up my bible, turned to the first page, the introduction to the King James version, and simply read right there, not having the strength to search for any particular passage. I just wanted to hold something good in my hands, and read anything inspiring. I cried even harder just reading the introduction, feeling it so contrastingly inspired to what I'd just run away from in the living room. I felt the Lord speaking to me through those words, with love and solemnity. It brought me back to what is fundamentally important. By then John had turned off the movie and come back to be with me, and I just cried, and tried to read aloud to him what had affected me so much, and I just cried. He didn't get it. He eventually talked me into watching the rest of the movie with him. I am so stupid.
I know it's not his fault. I am free to make choices. I just make dumb ones. John's become a little more sensitive to my entertainment preferences; at least he tries to keep his crap entertainment to himself these days.
I don't want Michael growing up with trash in his household!!! PERIOD! I'm not being oversensitive. We live in a really messed-up world, and the only way to keep sanity in it is to filter out the junk, and replace it tenfold with good things. I guess the "good things" aren't so entertaining to people whose senses have been numbed and ripped apart by trash entertainment.
Oh, gosh, I've got so much more I want to say on this subject... Filtering...
Being a damaged and broken girl, I need to start from scratch. So to begin the healing process, ideally I would love to filter out EVERYTHING except 1) honest, hard work; and 2) religion.
I don't like the word "religion" because it's got a long history of stigma and mixed-up ideas associated with it. So for this purpose, I'm defining "religion" as follows. I want to:
1) Read the scriptures, study them, pore over them, learn from them, apply them to my life;
2) Attend all my church meetings, and sign up for every service opportunity I can bear;
3) Get to know people, get to love them, truly care about them, and serve them. As soon as my most fundamental needs are met, use every spare moment in service to others.
I'm serious. Just those two things. Honest, hard work, and religion. Everything else will fall into place, and whatever else has been occupying my time will fall by the wayside, giving way to a better way.
Yes, the Lord's people are a peculiar people. I want to be peculiar. I wish I could be. I want to try.
See, I say all these things to convince myself that I want to be a good person. Then what'll I do? Wake up in the morning groggy and lazy, turn on the TV, and watch Oprah.
I hate being me!
posted by Angela Marie at 1:52 AM