Darkness

Six months back I was reading quite often and having no problem writing reviews for books. It was almost effortless from mind to laptop. Then a strange thing happened I started to feel down and gloomy. Well, as down and gloomy as I can get. I couldn’t put a finger on it right away. Then it finally clicked. I was filling my mind with dark thoughts.

How was I filling my mind with these dark thoughts you are probably asking. Well I’ll tell you how it started.

One day I was having a conversation with my boss’s assistant. We now call them executive assistant and not secretary. I digress… I noticed she was reading a book and it looked to be interesting about magic and whatnot. We had a nice discussion about different novels and she swore to me that the last novel she read was something I had to read. I told her that if she brought it in I would read it.

A few days later she brought me the book. I can’t remember the title and I don’t want to.
It was a book about magic set in old England with a setting both in the real world and the mystical world. Now this mystical world of fairies was an evil dark place. Everyday I would read this book and everyday I would slip deeper and deeper into this dark mentality. It was forming a cloud on my mind. I was starting to feel miserable. The moment I perceived that this book was warping my whole sense of reality I put it down. I had to return the book so I needed to know what happened and I didn’t want to insult her so I read the first and last paragraph of the last 5 or 6 chapters. Then I gave the book back the next day and was able to discuss it with her.

I told her the truth I found it difficult to read because it was so dark and threatening. And as I write this I can still feel the distress I felt while reading that book.

So what is this to you? Well it dawned on me how often I have heard people say “it’s harmless, its just fiction” or “why should I be concerned about what my children are reading?” So I am writing to say it does matter what your children are reading and what shows they watch on TV and what movies they see. In fact it matters what books your spouse reads and what shows they watch. All the media we take in can affect us and if I, a person who I believe to be very discerning was emotionally and psychologically affected how much worse someone who is not paying attention.

So dark movies, books and TV will infect minds with dark thoughts. Pornography will infect minds with sexual perversity. Media that suggests that doing drugs are cool will make people more open to the idea. But the powers that be in this world want us to be ignorant of this fact.

I laughed today as I read that some auto safety group was up in arms because Molly Cyrus (Hannah Montana) and her dad were filmed in the back seat of a car without a their seat belts on. How much worse are the other things the media wittingly and maybe sometimes unwittingly promotes? These other things don’t risk killing just the body but the mind and soul as well.

Bottom-line; make entertainment things that will lift you up. Hold fast to our Catholic faith and let that it be your guide and soon you will be turning off TV or movie more often and putting away a book that someone else told you was good.