About six weeks ago I began watching some children’s cartoons in the morning on the Family/Disney channel because I have to get up early to give my cat her insulin shot. I did that for a couple of weeks. The new year began and the television season resumed. Thanks to the writer’s strike (and I don’t mean that sarcastically) there were very few shows that actually had new episodes. I watched a couple of other kid’s shows and before I knew it, I was hooked.
For the past three weeks I have been watching the Family/Disney channel almost exclusively and couldn’t be happier. I still watch whatever episodes air of the adult shows I watch, but I have given up A Daily Show and Colbert Report (which are worthless without writers anyway).
Stress is a mental condition yet can manifest physical symptoms (which can actually be permanent). If feeling bad can damage your health, then why can’t feeling good improve it? They do say that laughter is the best medicine… In that vein, I now prefer children’s programming to adult programming. For some reason adults are obsessed with feeling bad. Adult shows and movies insist on depicting sad and depressing events with characters getting sick and dying. Just take a look at Oscar-winning movies: the vast majority of them are crappy, dramatic, retarded-gay-child-has-horrible-life-and-gets-cancer-and-dies types; the more depressing the better. Children’s programs on the other hand are all optimistic and hopeful. They still portray conflict, but nothing serious or permanent, and always fixable by the end of the episode.
As a side benefit, whereas adult’s programs are—very—slow paced and get boring very quickly, children’s programs are designed for shorter attention spans, and are thus much more entertaining and engaging. I have found that I can watch them much more easily than adult programming, and they hold my attention until the end. The one down side is that they tend to have silly sound effects and stuff which can occasionally be irritating.
Ever since I began watching kid’s shows, I have noticed that I do in fact feel better and my depression has lessened. I also feel better physically and have fewer pains and aches.
So if you are sick and feeling terrible, just take a couple of kid’s shows and call me in the morning.