How to Have a Great Life by Paul McGee

Author:Paul McGee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Never Underestimate the Power of Pause

When I was growing up the technology associated with television was a bit different to today. OK, that's underplaying things a little – it was vastly different. For a start, we didn't have colour television, everything was in black and white, and programmes were only shown during limited times of the day. One of the stations (to be fair we only had three) used to end its broadcasting schedule with the playing of the national anthem.

And when we wanted to change channels we had to push or twiddle the knobs on the television. There were no remote controls. And that had its benefits. Firstly, no single member of the family could hog the remote, and secondly you didn't spend half an hour lifting cushions, looking under the cat, or running round the house asking ‘Has anyone seen the remote?’

The lack of a remote control also made the nation fitter, particularly if you enjoyed channel surfing (across all three of them) as you physically had to keep moving up and down and walking to and from the television. Even those with a small living room with a television almost within touching distance of the sofa at least got to do some stretching exercises – you didn't need yoga or Pilates in those days.

One other technological challenge I faced when growing up was that if you missed your favourite TV show, that was it. We didn't even have the facilities to record programmes until I was in my teenage years. Tough life, eh?

So, you can see that I'm not looking back nostalgically and thinking ‘they were the good old days’. No way. I love the fact that you can now record programmes, watch catch-up TV, fast-forward through adverts, watch in high definition, and also pause the programme you're watching. I love the power of being able to freeze the action, to momentarily stop a story unfolding, or to draw out the tension during a football penalty shootout (unless I'm watching England, in which case I fast forward to the bit where you see their opponents celebrating). The power of the pause button gives me the opportunity to catch my breath, to get myself a drink, or to have a comfort break.

It's great that you can do that with television, but it's not always so easy to do with life, is it? To press pause. To take time out. To catch your breath.

It's not easy, but neither is it impossible.

The problem is, most of us are often living life on fast- forward – busy, rushing, doing. We're fighting fires, reacting to emails, multi-tasking, texting, tweeting, and twerking. (OK, maybe not that last one, but I couldn't resist including it.) And before we know it another day has gone. Another day lived on fast-forward.

But guess what?

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