Surviving The Clock Of Life

By Greg Lowe

"It was a great surprise to me when I discovered that most of the ugliness I saw in others, was but a reflection of my own nature"
-- anonymous quote from "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill

My television was set to turn on, as an alarm clock, on the morning of a late July day during the summer of 2000. Why use a TV as an alarm clock? Why not simply use an alarm clock? Call me an evening person, the antithesis of a morning person! Because, for me, traditional alarm clocks fail to do their job in the early morning hours -- especially during summer mornings when the previous evening's fire lit deep into the night.

Most of my summer had been, up to that particular morning, without the use of my TV as an alarm clock. In fact, being a teacher gave me the liberty to choose not to use a device to wake me prior than the time my body decided to wake during those precious summer months! Yes, I spent a few mornings during the summer of 2000 sleeping in later than my ambitious self-motivating eager side wanted to.

Something should be mentioned here about my philosophy towards the television as a medium for information. It was normally kept in my closet, far away from my living quarters. The purpose to keep my TV far from my living room was to free my soul from the lazy, mind-erasing power of commercial TV programs. I made a stance back in the summer of 1997 to eliminate a majority of the TV viewing that took place in my life at that time. Since then, the TV had been primarily used to watch movies on video once or twice a month.

Back to the fateful morning.

On clicked the TV around 8:00 am. I woke to, I believe, NBC's The Early Show (see, I don't even know the names of those shows). Unbeknownst to me at that hour, a crash of a Concord jet had occurred the previous day. I saw a snip coverage of an interview with a Concord expert, with no real details of the crash. I wanted more information on the crash, since this was my first encounter of the incident. I was curious: did anyone die, where did it take place, and when did it happen? Unfortunately, the monster of commercial television prevented me from ascertaining the details that were of interest to me. Instead of gaining this information, I was subjected to 15 minutes of information and interviews regarding a show (which happened to also be supplied by the same network -- hmmm, how curious!) called something like Survivors or The Survivor. I was aghast: was this network placing a higher priority on their own self-made show than that of an incident that was truly newsworthy? I sat there in bed, shocked, waiting to get information on the crash, and instead, was plummeted with analysis, details, opinions, and promotion of some show designed to attract idle minds to sit in front of their evening televisions with their minds shut off. The network even had an expert give his opinion on which contestant would be the lone survivor, and, when the piece ended, the hosts of the morning show added their input as to who they each thought would be the "winner."

I was shocked. How many people had fallen victim to this loop? I also knew, with full knowledge of the quote at the beginning of this essay, that the answer to that question had the possibility to change my life in some way. I saw the endless loop set up by this network: watch the show, feed on the trap, get somewhat hooked, fall for the self-promotion, get pulled further in by commercials and "news" of the status of the show, further down as one feels out of current event information while others have more knowledge of the show's latest status, watch it again, feed on the trap, swirling downward as the seconds from the life -- that was graciously given to you -- tick by, as your life gets more aligned with mindless lifeless unproductivity.

However, the question I then asked myself, the morning which I completed Napoleon Hill's book for the second time within a month, was one that had the potential to change my life for the better: what was the difference between the show Survivor and that of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association?

The answer to that question had to be sought -- because if the answer was "nothing" then the break I had been seeking from "following" sports had to be finally completed.

"Follow" sports? Follow. I thought of the word and what it meant. Follow what? Follow who?

I then decided to no longer be a follower. I decided to be a leader. The first sentence that came to mind upon that decision was written immediately after this essay: