TV Series and Relationships

I was talking to someone the other day about TV series on DVD. He had watched the first season all the way through while it played on television, somehow missed the second and third seasons, and caught the tail end of the fourth.

And while the first few seasons were a while ago, their content was still relevant to the current season. He felt compelled to go back and watch the seasons that he missed to truly appreciate the season he was watching at the time.

It occured to me that this is the way that we treat our relationships with people. Personally, I watch a few select shows--NCIS, CSI, Boy Meets World (when it was on), Survivor--and you can't just jump in the middle of the season and expect to know what is going on, how different relationships between characters have evolved, etc. Well, I mean, you can, but you will be confused and need to view previous episodes, if not seasons, to catch up.

Similarly, we approach relationships in the same manner. We jump into a person's life and try to pick up where they are right now, not giving any thought to their past. We can't just go out and buy that person's life on DVD and "catch up."

And hey, we might get lengthy narratives and a pretty good idea of what happened in that person's life, but that is similar to reading a summary of an episode in a season. You get the main idea, but the character's (or person's in this case) facial expressions, actions, tone of voice are lost. The majority of what we understand is based on non verbal communication--what we see, what we hear. Take away that component, and you miss out on that woman's heartfelt glance toward her coworker or that man's look of contempt, all the richness that existed at the moment that the action took place.

While these two events are different--one is a TV show and the other is reality-- I stilll see similarities between them. It's so interesting that we are drawn to this idea of getting the full-length, uncensored background of a story when it in no way shows how we really live. We can't punch the rewind button in a person's life and get the full experience. Yeah, there's pictures and stories and sometimes home movies, but even all these together only give us a glimpse into that person's life. The only way for us to experience events with people is to be there when they happen.

We would never even dream about becoming addicted to a TV show without watching the previous seasons, but we find it perfectly okay to live our lives and form relationships with people in this way...