It’s not a particularly novel idea. What you put into your body becomes your body. How many
documentaries are there that talk about how our lives are shaped or altered by
the food that we eat? Food, Inc., Supersize Me, You Are What You Eat… the list goes on and on. If you choose to put
all sorts of unhealthy things into your body, your body will change, and your
lifestyle will change as well.
Pretty much nobody disagrees on that point.
But lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how
people—myself included—don’t often acknowledge that the same is true of the
thoughts and ideas we put into our minds.
Into our hearts.
This isn’t a new idea either. Philippians 4:8: “Finally,
brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable: think about such things.” And Proverbs
4: 23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
(For the record, Proverbs was written somewhere between the 10th and
6th centuries B.C., and Philippians in about 62 A.D. So yeah- not
exactly a novel thought.)
The other day, I was talking to some of my coworkers about a
pretty popular TV show. The new season is starting up soon, and everybody was
saying how excited they were about it: with the way the previous season left
some of the characters hanging, they were all dying to know what was going to
happen next.
You may have heard of it. You may watch it. Game of Thrones, it’s called.
Its reputation, I am sure, precedes it. As one of my
coworkers said, “You pretty much have to set aside any moral code you may have
to watch it.”
I know this for a fact, because I watched the first three
seasons. Well, sort of. I watched most of them. Between Wikipedia and the
advice of some friends, I skipped a few scenes (what I thought would be the
worst ones) and covered my eyes for others.
But I still think I watched too much. I watched plenty of
thoughts and ideas—ugly ones—being played out over and over again.
I tried to justify it. The story was so intriguing! And there were so many deep, complicated characters!
Yeah, it was vulgar and shocking and horrible in places… but what was going to
happen next?!
So I kept watching. I kept watching, even though every
episode I watched left me feeling gross, like I’d just eaten twelve burgers
from Five Guys.
What you put into your
body becomes your body.
“You pretty much have to set aside any moral code you may
have to watch it.” That’s what my coworker said. And the question that
unavoidably rose up in my mind following such a claim was this: why would I want to?
Yeah, Kate. Why would
you want to?
Should it be that easy for us to set aside our moral codes?
Our values of right and wrong, of beauty and depravity? Shouldn’t it take more
than an interesting story for us to wave goodbye to a sense of good and evil?
While I was watching the first three seasons, I used to
argue with myself that I wasn’t letting my moral code slide. I watched the
show, yeah, but I knew when stuff I was watching was wrong. I could articulate
to you which characters were evil, which were good (and which were a properly
human mix of both). I could tell you what that the perversions of love and
beauty and goodness were. I could, and did, get upset by them. And they stuck
with me, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We should be shocked by evil, and God forbid that we forget the distortions
of justice that we see and recognize, because if we forget them we won’t do anything about them.
And maybe that’s the problem. I watched, was shocked, and did nothing.
I kept watching as, episode after episode, men committed
horrible acts of violence against women, always as a norm, and sometimes even
in the name of “love”. I said how
horrible it was, but I didn’t join any advocacy group for violence against
women, or go volunteer at a shelter for women in need.
I kept watching as people were glorified for being heartless,
for doing monstrous things, and I said it was awful. But I didn’t go to the
city mission and work with young people trapped in cycles of similar violence.
I didn’t do anything. I just watched.
So what if I closed my eyes? So what if I skipped a few
scenes? The ideas and the thoughts stayed with me. And because they did, I got
more and more afraid of what I might become numb to if I kept watching.
I mentioned this to my coworker, during our conversation,
but he just suggested (politely) that I was being too sensitive.
“It’s just the time period of the show; the setting. They’re
just being realistic, and sometimes reality is hard.”
Yes. I know that. But shouldn’t that “reality” have woken me
up to the brokenness in my own world? Because it didn’t.
When it comes to entertainment, there is such thing as going too far. Just because you can push a boundary doesn’t mean you
should. Art of any kind (visual arts, music, film, the written word) is
supposed to make you wonder; supposed to get you thinking… but it should be
more than just shock value. It can and should expose darkness to get to light.
When used well, the ugliness art exposes can make the beauty that much more powerful. But it isn’t always used well… which is the
case with this particular show.
There is evil in the world. But when all you do is dwell on
it—dig your hands into it and mush it around and watch as it slides over your
fingers—you’re missing the point.
What you put into your
body becomes your body. What you put in your mind comes out in your life.
Spend a lot of time dwelling on the tick-tock way the
natural world works, the science of it, and you’ll start to make all sorts of
connections: you begin to see things through a particular lens. In the same
way, if you study the color of human relationships, the artistry of bitter
white snow on a sunset-darkened tree limb… well, you’re bound to notice things
in a different way. Whatever the focus, when you talk big, beautiful ideas and
mind-spinning questions with others, and read books and watch movies that
challenge and grow you, well, that will show in your life. You can’t help it:
the things that you pull into your brain play out in your life.
A little junk food, a little brain McDonald’s or Hershey’s,
isn’t really all that bad. There are conversations to have and books to read
and things to do that don’t necessarily make you a better person… but they
don’t make you any worse either, and really, they’re just fun. Fluff &
nonsense entertainment.
But there are things you can focus on that are, well, just
plain dangerous. Thingsthat harm your brain as much as drugs harm your body. They reorder the pathways of your mind,
shaping your perceptions without you even realizing it.
Why would I put these
things into my mind? Let them settle into my heart, and play out in my life and
my actions… or lack thereof?
This is why I have to be done. This is why I’m abandoning
all those characters—Jon Snow and Tyrian and Arya and the others—to whatever
fates they have coming to them (which, let’s face it: can’t be that great
anyway, since all the good characters die or turn nasty). I'll miss the characters... but I don’t want or need the rest of it in my mind.
If you’re reading this and you’re a fan of GoT, please don’t take this as me trying
to convince you to stop watching the show, or telling you you’re a horrible
person for watching it. I couldn’t do that without being a complete and utter
hypocrite, obviously. And, if you do keep watching, I may ask you for a quick,
G-rated recap of the new season (is Daenerys finally doing something with those dragons? And has “winter” come
yet?) This post is just me; just my thoughts about something that’s been
pressing on my mind and heart for a long while, that I’m finally doing
something about. And if it makes you think?
Well, that’s great.
Because this could
become one of those big, beautiful conversations; those challenging ideas that
make us grow and become a little more like the kind of people that we’re meant
to be.
Thanks for reading. ^_^
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