Challenges in today’s rest and entertainment
With the present temper in the world of rest, recreation and entertainment, we need to develop a very discerning sense of what is truly helpful and healthy, since a lot of ingredients, heady but harmful, actually glut such world.
How many times have I talked with people, both young and old, who, for example, got so addicted to the Internet, or who can’t say no to watching basketball or boxing on TV, that they end up gravely disoriented and even alienated!
They can go to the extent of neglecting their meals and sleep. Worse, they can develop asocial or even anti-social tendencies. Other graver disorders can emerge.
Many are seriously confused as to what means to rest properly, or what would constitute as good entertainment. They naively pursue their R and R guided at best only by instincts and common sense, when the present environment is filled with complicated predatory elements.
We need to be aware of this predicament and start to do something to correct it. In this we need to be active and aggressive and very discerning, not passive and complacent.
We actually are ranged against formidable challenges, and we just have to know how to grapple with them. We may need to check out the materials involved, do some consulting and research, and make a plan with clear ideas about the expected benefits and possible dangers.
We have to examine our understanding of this human need, verifying if we have the proper attitudes and practices. We also have to regularly assess the moral quality of this world of R and R and see if it conforms to the proper standards.
Truth is that our rest and entertainment should not only have its salutary effects on our physical or emotional well-being. It should also build up and reinforce our spiritual and moral outlook in life. They should not be kept from this very crucial requirement.
Sad to say, this is what we are seeing these days. It looks like things spiritual and moral, the things of our faith and those directly related to God are banned from this territory, in the mistaken notion that they just spoil the fun.
Thus, we should not limit our rest and entertainment to the purely physical, visual and instinctive variety. They should also include the more refined kinds like reading, listening, imagining, etc.
We need to ask ourselves questions like whether our rest and entertainment help us to pray, or to live in the presence of God, or to develop a healthy social and apostolic concern.
Do they make us closer to God and to others? Anything in them that weakens these human needs should be acted upon accordingly, or even rejected altogether.
Do the relief and pleasure they give make us more eager to go back to work, or do they, on the contrary, dampen our desire to serve others? Is there joy and peace as a result, or does the fun and excitement they produce agitate us improperly?
Is our unity of life made stronger with them, or do they tend to fragment our life into more uncoordinated or disconnected parts? Do we find it easy or hard, for example, to shift from work to rest and then back to work?
We have to be keenly careful when our rest and entertainment stir the wrong parts in our system, leading us to develop the escapist syndrome, creating fantasies and parallel realities, and leaving us completely self-absorbed.
We have to be forewarned that many of the shows and movies today are notorious for being erotic and titillating. They massage the flesh but leaves the spirit to deteriorate.
Our rest and entertainment should not take us away from our immediate surrounding. While they have the license to fly to the moon of make-believe, they should not be allowed to uproot us from reality.
Rather they should make us gain a deeper appreciation of the real and immediate world. We should see that they make us more of a normal person, not one with strange traits, habits and idiosyncrasies.
They should help us establish more intimate relations with God and with others, sharpening our knowledge and love for them. When we notice that we are just filled with self-contentment, we have to realize we have made a wrong turn.
These, to me, are some challenges we have with respect to attending to our need for rest, recreation and entertainment. We have to analyze them more finely so as to have a good grip of the situation.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
