IT'S our world today.
There's too much hate, too much sufferings, too much noise, too much self-entitlement, and even too much information.
Thus, today, more than ever, the ability to say stop, enough, is of great importance.
After all, life in this world is finite and we cannot bring anything to the afterworld, so... why not only take and accept and imbibe what you can use, process, and need?
But human as we are, we are not built that way, there is that desire to want more and more.
Some friends admit to being addicted to Netflix, watching seasons upon seasons of TV series, almost non-stop. I can't relate. I'm already fighting my addiction to Facebook, I can't afford another.
On this recent trip to Manila to attend the 22nd Civic Journalism Community Newspaper Awards, I said I will use the time to just relax and try to catch up on some work outside work -- a small painting for the Chinese Painting Exhibit this August, and my friend's bird book.
Thus, the only reason I went out of the hotel was for necessities: to have dinner right next door and to buy watercolor paints to practice with before making the final piece (I brought the materials for the final piece including the Chinese brushes and water container, but I forgot that I still have to practice my strokes before attempting to make that one single painting).
But since it's a hotel room, then there is the cable TV... that was turned on the whole time. The only station I watch on cable us the History Channel. When it's not available, then anything about food. But there was the History Channel, so I was watching and listening and watching and listening... for two straight days in between attending the day's schedules.
An hour before checkout time, all alone in my room and just passing time, I wondered why I was tired.
That was when I became conscious of my mind processing the information I was hearing and watching on TV, about how this guy had to catch sharks to get mouth swabs that will help shark bite victims, how long-ago myths are proving to be real and that Atlantis may even be the newly-discovered underwater continent Newzealandia, the rigid training and heroism of Navy Seals and the operation where they got Osama Bin Laden, my head was throbbing and bursting with information that it picked up unconsciously while I was TV bingeing.