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Until recently, most evenings, after my toddler had finally fallen asleep, I would flop on the sofa, turn on Netflix, and watch episode after episode until either my exhaustion or my husband would call time on this pitiful sight. Turning the television off, I’d experience a surge of self-disgust at how dry my eyes felt, and disappointment that the whole evening had disappeared. I would be momentarily stunned by my re-entry into a world in which there were no socially-awkward-but-brilliant private detectives, just a dishwasher that needed loading and a child who would be waking all too soon. I felt crushed by this return to my life (which was odd, because I am fortunate enough to like my life, most of the time).
I find it very easy to watch too much TV – and very difficult to watch the right amount. What is the right amount? I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I picked up an intriguing novel called Butter, by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton, in which one of the characters asks herself that question.
Reading in my too-short lunch break, or during my daughter’s naps, or when I was supposed to be writing this column, was a very different experience from my TV binge. I savoured every page, slowing down to digest not only the delicious descriptions of meals but also the provoking conversations about food and appetite, how much is enough, what it means to eat what you want – and why we don’t. The novel is about (among many other things) how and why we consume things – food, journalism, people – and what kind of consumption makes for a better life. As I came to understand the characters in this novel, I began to understand parts of myself in new ways, too.
I started to think more about what was happening as I turned the TV on and my mind turned off – why I would plan to watch just one episode, but when I came to the end of it, I’d find myself unable to stop. It was as if I had no space in my mind to make any other choice; I was gobbling up episodes without digesting them, without even chewing them over, swallowing each one whole.
There is a way of consuming TV, and perhaps everything, that makes it very difficult to feel what the “right amount” is, because it is more about getting away from something, rather than digesting something. TV, like drugs or sex or Instagram, can be used in a way that is more about escaping one’s own mind, rather than exploring and understanding something about humanity and ourselves. It makes me think of a man I once interviewed who was addicted to masturbating, to the point where it almost destroyed his otherwise apparently successful life. He would sit in his office until past midnight, unable to stop. The point was not to climax, but to avoid climaxing, to keep going, on and on and on and on, he explained. “It was about soothing, escaping … about being able to meet a need without having intimacy.”
Of course, we all need a little escapism every now and then. But if we escape ourselves completely, and for too long, we can lose touch with the ordinary, deeply meaningful moments of our day-to-day lives, such as cooking a nice meal for dinner. Butter is also the story of a woman who discovers her appetite – and not for food alone – after making herself a delicious dinner of rice with butter and soy sauce. I have been salivating for that meal ever since reading that passage, but I have not yet made it for myself. Why not?
Between my child and my job and my quirky detective TV shows, I have not been very good at cooking. Eating has come to feel like something I do to survive, rather than something I enjoy. I’ve lost my appetite – not in the sense of not being hungry, but in the sense of losing contact with a part of myself; my appetite for life.
Of course, there is no fixed answer to the question “what is the right amount?” because it depends on your appetite. It is very easy to know when you’ve had enough if you are in touch with your appetite and can listen to yourself, to acknowledge when your appetite is sated. This is key to building a better life, and it requires being in a particular kind of intimate contact with yourself; a kind of intimate contact that differs in every way from a masturbation addiction.
Recently, I decided to have a night off from watching TV. I didn’t turn it on and I was amazed by how much time I had. I tidied the kitchen and felt satisfied by the ordinary, everyday experience of contributing something useful to family life, rather than escaping it. I felt I wanted more evenings like that, and not so many lost in TV. But does it have to be all or nothing? Or can I stay in contact with my appetite and find my way to an amount that feels right?
Before I sent this column to my editor, I made myself rice with butter and soy sauce. It was delicious, I ate too much of it – and I have no regrets.
Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist and the author of When I Grow Up – Conversations With Adults in Search of Adulthood
