“If you sit too long in front of that screen, your eyes will go square,” my Dad used to say. And while I’ve never suffered any physical changes for the worse due to the long hours I’ve spent watching TV, other problems have arisen from investing my spare time in this pursuit. When I first began to realize, about a year ago, just how far I’d been dragged away from a healthy spiritual life by my preoccupation with television, I was scared. I wanted to run away from the world and spend more time cultivating spiritual health and happiness but, with typical human frailty, I wanted to take the TV with me. I tried to stop completely, and lasted a grand total of 36 hours before caving in. This was bad, and I knew it.

Having been shown just how utterly inept I was at the art of complete self-denial, I tried another tack. I started to follow the time limits my parents set up for the use of electronics. I made sure I said my night prayers after, and not before, I watched that evening’s episodes. I slowly began to rebuild my spiritual awareness and to spend more time dwelling on what actually mattered.

And when I watched TV, I would examine everything that happened on screen and try to see how the characters, settings and plots fit (or didn’t) into what I believed as a Catholic. Since the show I watched at the time was the sci-fi adventure Star Trek: The Next Generation, which has a rather philosophical side, this was not too hard. This wasn’t always very rewarding, however; Star Trek, like most products of Hollywood, has many liberal biases which can make watching the show very uncomfortable for someone who tends to lean in the opposite direction. But intermingled with the religious views I didn’t like, there were many messages the show contained that I could heartily approve of. For example, what is more enjoyable to a pro-lifer than seeing one of her favourite characters, a blind man who sees electronically, standing up for his worth as a human to a race of genetically engineered people who would have disposed of someone like him at conception?

So enjoyable did I find this philosophical approach that I began to try it with a myriad of other shows, ranging from sitcoms to crime dramas to thrillers. It has made my TV-watching experience vastly more rewarding, for this kind of study allows me to fully enjoy immersing myself in a show without worrying about losing focus on my Catholicism and my final heavenly goal. And when you’re travelling a great and wonderful galaxy, even if it’s only on television, it’s always nice to be able to turn to its Creator at the end of the day and offer Him a loving thank you for the beauty of it all.

(Nundal, 16, is a student at Traditional Learning Academy in Coquitlam, B.C.)