Reality isn’t Reality Anymore

What is your real­ity right now? Do you need to lose 10 lbs? Do you need to find a bet­ter job? Are you happy with your spouse?

Each of us, at any given moment in time, has a real­ity dif­fer­ent than those around us. But some­times it is hard for us to unmask that real­ity because we are bom­barded with other people’s real­i­ties every time we turn on the tele­vi­sion, open a mag­a­zine, or lis­ten to the radio.

Take, for exam­ple, real­ity television.

Below is a list of some of the real­ity tele­vi­sion shows. I have made up my own titles for them, so please don’t take offense.

1. Dys­func­tional House­wives of Every County in Amer­ica
2. I Want to Hang Out with Don­ald Trump
3. Weight Loss Boot Camp
4. I Think I Can Sing
5. I Am a Washed Up Celebrity, Want to See Me Dance?
6. My Cup­cakes are Bet­ter than Yours
7. My Fash­ion Designs are Bet­ter than Yours
8. Let’s See if I Can Sur­vive on this Island with No Food or Water
9. I Want to Have 30 Hot Bachelors/Bachelorettes Fight for Me while Vis­it­ing Beau­ti­ful Exotic Spots All Around the World
10. I’m Impos­si­bly Rich and Famous – Watch Me Whine About My Life

…and so many more. Too many to name.

It is kind of ridicu­lous if you ask me. Then again, I spent two hours last night watch­ing a “don’t judge me by my looks, judge me by my VOICE” real­ity show.

But it’s more than just these tele­vi­sion shows. This phe­nom­e­non has infil­trated news and mag­a­zines as well.

Watch the news, and you will hear more about Lind­sey Lohan steal­ing jew­elry than the sur­vivors of the Japan tsunami. Maybe if they had a “sur­vivors of the Japan­ese tsunami who will really make you cry while hear­ing about their sto­ries” real­ity show, we would care more. Maybe then it would get more news cov­er­age. Maybe we could set up a Face­book page and post com­ments on who to vote off the show. Maybe we could text our votes for the sad­dest stories…

Open a mag­a­zine and you are instantly slapped with com­plete “un-reality.” The women on the cov­ers and in the ads have been air­brushed from here to eter­nity. Any­thing not air­brushed has been injected, plumped or lifted. No one looks like that — unless you have a full time nutri­tion­ist, per­sonal trainer, makeup and hair designer, per­sonal styl­ist, and a plas­tic surgeon.

We need to reex­am­ine our real priorities.

What is the qual­ity of our rela­tion­ships? How authen­tic is our spir­i­tual life? How can we find joy in our careers? What are we doing to be emo­tion­ally stable?

I can see it now, a new real­ity show, where peo­ple work each day on keep­ing their pri­or­i­ties in check and make incre­men­tal progress toward a more pur­pose­ful life.

I know I would tune in to watch that. Of course, it would prob­a­bly be can­celled because the level of dys­func­tion is just too low.