Some people give up chocolate, or alcohol, but when Michael Kelly gave up watching TV for Lent, he found temptation at every turn
A year or two ago, I went in to the office on Ash Wednesday, having been to Mass like a good boy and got the ashes on my forehead. I went into a meeting with my boss and he nearly fell off the chair laughing - I think his actual words were "what the hell is that on your head?" I sheepishly told him about the custom of Catholics being marked on the forehead by the sign of the cross on Ash Wednesday. If ever there was an analogy for just how much Ireland has changed, then maybe that's it. The custom would have once been the norm, if not obligatory. Now, to many, it seems deeply unfashionable, or a piece of cute religious hokum.
The whole notion of Lent as a time of self-sacrifice is a bit of a red herring these days, too. It runs completely contrary to the defining characteristic of modern Irish society: you get whatever you want, pretty much whenever you want it. Want to go grocery shopping at four in the morning? No problem - your local supermarket is open. Want to buy that 84-inch Plasma screen for €35,000? Don't bother saving. Just borrow. You deserve it. Want to buy a one-bedroom apartment for €750,000 but don't have any savings? Someone will lend it to you, all 110 per cent of it. Give yourself a holiday with the balance.
The idea that you would deliberately deprive yourself of something you enjoy is considered to be bad sport. Almost subversive. We're all busy. Time poor. Cash rich. So why would you deprive yourself any further? That just ain't right.
But to my mind, that's a good reason to give things up at Lent. Forget about the religious significance of it (if you want) and just consider it an annual snub to all the marketing, advertising and general commercialism that tries to convince you that you need stuff to exist.
So, this year I gave up something that I really enjoy but suspect is quite bad for me: television. Anyone I told thought I was nuts. They were almost offended. They stared incredulously at me. "How could you do that to your telly?" they beseeched, standing protectively in front of it. Well, I just get the feeling that TV isn't a 100 per cent positive thing for me anymore. So giving it up was part religious self-sacrifice, part new-age detox programme.
We are not huge TV watchers in our house, but it does get switched on most nights. We wouldn't be into soaps, but would watch the news, Frasier, The Simpsons. I have been watching the satellite channel More4 a lot (if you haven't seen The Daily Show yet, check it out. It's great). And I am a fan of The West Wing. Sometimes you might find an interesting documentary on the History Channel or National Geographic. Documentaries are sort of guilt-free; so even though you are wasting your life away in front of the TV, at least you're learning a few things.
But most nights we just sit there flicking between channels, wishing there was something good on, and end up watching Friends reruns that we've seen 100 times before. You would think, given that I spend so much time complaining that there is nothing on, I would have been happy to give it up for 40 days? But no. I was actually apprehensive. Again it's that niggle that you're depriving yourself, senselessly, of something nice. Something good. A little treat to help you chill after a hard day's work.
In the first week of Lent, I went to meet two old friends of mine, to catch up over a pint (thank goodness I wasn't off those, too). As is almost always the case in pubs these days, there was a TV on. In fact, there were two TVs on. One at each end of the pub, showing two different Champions League matches. So I sat there over two or three pints, feeling guilty and trying to avoid eye contact with my nemesis. For the record, Chelsea got beaten.
I thought getting out to the pub would be a good way to pass an evening without TV - but I should have known better. That's one thing I've noticed: TVs are everywhere. You don't notice that until you're trying to avoid them. Queue in a bank and everyone in the queue is staring blankly at Sky News.
Mrs Kelly arrived home one day with the DVD Cheaper by the Dozen. We had a discussion on whether watching a DVD would break the TV ban. I reckoned it would. We had another discussion on whether Cheaper by the Dozen is so bad, it might count as penance.
Most nights it didn't really bother me, but on a few occasions I really felt I was missing out. For example, I really missed not being able to watch the last two Six Nations matches. For the Ireland/Scotland game, I listened to it on the radio. It wasn't bad, but it's not exactly a multi-media entertainment extravaganza. For the England game we were away in Spain for the weekend and only heard Ireland had won when we got home. I could only imagine the tension, the atmosphere and the excitement of Shane Horgan's last-gasp try. I gritted my teeth as a mate told me how it was the greatest rugby match he had ever watched.
I moved the radio from our kitchen to the sitting room and took to listening to it in the evening. There's a whole world out there on night time radio, which was a bit of a revelation. RTÉ Radio 1 has some great feature programmes. I listened to The Mystery Train with John Kelly, Pet Sounds on Today FM, and even Vincent Browne.
I also got into really reading the papers. I'm a daily reader but tend to be a scanner - I read things that interest me, such as the front page, international news, the letters page, a bit of sport, and I almost always do the crossword. But with nothing else to do, I started reading the entire paper, cover to cover.
On the first Sunday evening in Lent I sat down after dinner at about 6pm and read all the Sunday papers. That got me to about 7.30pm. I played a little piano (or should I say a small amount of a regular-sized piano). Mrs Kelly and I engaged in an activity called "talking" for a while. Then I read some more. I got so bored I went to bed at about 9pm. I woke up the next morning after 10 hours sleep, and I was so tired for the day I couldn't move.
The great thing about giving up TV is that I got through a lot of books. I have always loved reading, but noticed recently that it took me about a month to get through a John Irving book - in my defence it was a big book, but that's still pretty pathetic. It was probably because I was only reading it in bed for 10 minutes before going to sleep. When you think about that, spending an hour watching reruns of Friends is a complete waste of time. In the almost six weeks of Lent, I got through six books, among them Shackleton's Boat Journey, Frank Worsley's heroic tale of survival and a journey in a 20ft open boat across the worst seas on the planet. The hardship they went through made my little sacrifice seem pretty pathetic.
I was reading on the internet about this guy who gave up TV for good. He said that about six weeks after he stopped watching it, he finally realised what a waste of time TV really is. I'm not sure I had an epiphany like that, or that I fully agree with him. I do feel giving it up was worthwhile, but I could never quite shake the feeling of being "out of touch".
I did have a realisation of sorts. TV's great achievement is getting you informed rapidly, with a series of quick soundbites, while you lie on the couch in a sort of stupor, letting it all wash over you. But to get yourself informed when you don't have TV? It's hard work. You have to read. You have to listen. And maybe, just maybe, you are more informed as a result.