mental junk-food

I read an interesting article about how external stimulus, experiences and interactions shape your brain and therefore your personality, how you think, react and approach situations.  It similar to the whole “it takes a village to raise a child” theory, only more focused on the village’s practices than the maturing of a child. 

I may not (just barely) be a child anymore, but I do believe everything, person, is in constant evolution.  Like the Buddhist understanding of ‘impermanence.’  This is difficult for some people to grasp because for a lot, like myself, the one constant in my life is myself.  But it not necessarily the idea that I am not a permanent staple, it’s more the understanding that who I am is in constant flux and change.  Using myself as an example, I’ve always grasped that I am an endlessly adapting human being, as is everyone.  But recently I’m realizing just how much of a role circumstances and experiences outside of ‘me’ affect me.  How I act, talk, think and interpret the world is the culmination of external stimulus. 

I’ve been trying to pinpoint and identify outside stimulus or things I experience that affect my thinking or perception.  Some stuff affects me in positive ways, some stuff affects me negatively.  I consider some of this stuff to be mental junk-food.  It does absolutely nothing for me except waste my time, fill me with useless and misguided information and is potentially to be detrimental to my emotional and mental health.  Like eating empty calories in the form of Ruffle’s sour cream and onion chips, its temporary satiety of information and stimulus.  Sure, I’m not hungry anymore, but now I have saddle bag thighs and in 20 minutes I’m gonna be looking for more food. 

I’ve known for years that reading ‘women’s’ magazines really negatively affected my body image and warped my perception of the female role.  Cosmo, Allure and Shape taught me that how good you look (then taught you ‘how’ to do it) mattered more than how well you performed your job, that sexually pleasing your man was the most important bedroom (and other room/park/car/elevator) activity and endless hours at the gym are required.  It was unacceptable to be un-pretty, un-fit, un-fashionable and a non- nymphomaniac; as a woman your duty to be physically attractive.  I eventually and slowly learned, as I purged these magazines from my life, that I owe it to no one to be pretty, thin or a sex-aholic. 

That being said, I never truly considered that which eats up my evening and distracts me while I exercise in the morning, the television.  I always wake up and watch the Tyra show.  That’s right, I admit I watch Tyra.  Why?  ‘Cause it’s the only thing on at 6:00 in the morning, besides the news, and I watch the news in the form of the Today show at 7:00a.  I’m daft, I admit that also, so it only just hit me this morning (the show was about the Bad Girl’s Club, some reality show) that the Tyra show sucks (I knew this) and was a horrible form of mental junk-food.  Duh.  (So is the Today show, but it’s similar ice cream labeled ‘low-fat;’ it gives you justification to inhale the whole gallon despite the fact that it’s all refined sugar and chemicals.  They call it news, but is it?)

Reality tv is mental junk-food, gossip is mental junk-food, shows and books about some diva’s life in rich-ville are mental junk-foods, infomercials, advertisements, shock-jocks are all guilty pleasures that are mental junk-food.  I feel like all these things that occupy our time and attention contribute to a widespread lack of personality, the inability to think for yourself and a general negative attitude.  A warped perception of life.  At the very least it doesn’t encourage personal development.  And while that doesn’t mean that I’m going to immediately replace my hour of “The Girls Next Door” with Maya Angelou poetry books and walks around the neighborhood, it does mean that I’ve finally realized how clogged people’s ( and my) brains have become with junk.  A preoccupation with vapid, shallow, narrow-minded fluff.  It stimulates us, but instead of stimulating mental growth, it stimulates mental shrinkage, encourages narrow-mindedness. 

But, you can eliminate junk food from your house, you can start a healthy eating diet.  Is it possible these days to go on a mental junk-food diet?