{"id":39212,"date":"2022-07-29T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/turn-on-comfort-tv-turn-off-the-strife\/"},"modified":"2022-07-29T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T10:30:00","slug":"turn-on-comfort-tv-turn-off-the-strife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/turn-on-comfort-tv-turn-off-the-strife\/","title":{"rendered":"Turn on comfort TV, turn off the strife"},"content":{"rendered":"

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cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like you, I can watch anything I want to on television right now. Between cable, streaming and YouTube, I can experience any adventure, get involved in any romance or inhabit any world I feel like inhabiting, anytime I want.<\/p>\n

But I have no idea why I pay for all these wonderful escape options when there are only two or three shows that I turn to at night. That\u2019s because I watch only what I call comfort shows. As I sit on the couch searching for something to watch, I already know where I\u2019ll wind up: I\u2019ll be at \u201cBob\u2019s Burgers\u201d or in Miami with \u201cThe Golden Girls.\u201d Or in D.C. with the cast of \u201c227.\u201d Or maybe I\u2019ll choose to visit Canada by way of \u201cKim\u2019s Convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shows I watch are low-stakes, where no one gets murdered or harmed in any way. A show where the characters wrap up their problems at the end of each episode.<\/p>\n

You most likely have a comfort show, too, though you might not admit it. Because admitting it would be admitting that you, like me, live with anxiety. I believe the comfort shows help, in small ways, to mitigate that anxiety. After you come home from a hard day of contending with this off-its-rocker country of ours, the last thing you want from your evening entertainment is more conflict.<\/p>\n

You do this because of the silent shame that comes with being an American who isn\u2019t resilient, who sometimes just can\u2019t deal with the outside world. I suppose this is a good time to note that, in America, we\u2019re not supposed to have mental health problems. Mental health problems are considered a form of weakness. Only \u201cbootstrapping\u201d is applauded. We are supposed to ignore those nagging feelings of worry, angst and helplessness and just get on with it. It\u2019s one of the things we pride ourselves on.<\/p>\n

But there you sit, watching an episode of \u201cThe Brady Bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I was a child, older people often told me that they learned how to swim by having a parent or someone else throw them into a body of water.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father took me down to the lake and just threw me in,\u201d they say. \u201cI had to either sink or swim.\u201d<\/p>\n

These stories always horrified me when I was younger. And while many of the people who tell them puff their chests out about how they\u2019re such good swimmers because of it, I\u2019m sure most were more likely scarred by the experience. I could never work out why the person who supposedly did the throwing couldn\u2019t just take the time to teach a kid how to swim. Because teaching a child to swim should be done carefully: You walk a child into the water slowly, then up to the knees. Then up to the chest; then very slowly, helping the child put his head underwater.<\/p>\n

Today, I realize these tales were about a trial-by-fire philosophy. It stems from the idea that life is hard and you might as well learn that early. People tell this story to explain how resilient they are. How self-reliant. How strong.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s mostly for show; most of us are not that tough. Some people escape the harsh realities by arming themselves to the teeth and joining forces with other scared people who want to tear the country apart. Others, including me, prefer to escape into a world where no such problems exist. Where the people are always funny and likable. Doing this doesn\u2019t make you weak; it just makes you human.<\/p>\n

Brian Broome is a contributing columnist for<\/em> The Washington Post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like you, I can watch anything I want to on television right now. Between cable, streaming and YouTube, I can experience any adventure, get involved in any romance or inhabit any world I feel like inhabiting, anytime I want. But I have no idea why I pay for all these wonderful escape options when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39212"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}