I watch so much TV, it's sad. I watch 'Happy Endings', '30 Rock'

Hear the words of Anders Holm: “I watch so much TV, it’s sad. I watch ‘Happy Endings’, ‘30 Rock’, ‘Parks and Rec’, ‘The Office’, ‘Eagleheart’, ‘Children’s Hospital’. ‘Modern Family’ I guess I’m still kinda watching.” At first glance, these words seem but a casual jest, the confession of a man bound to the screen. Yet beneath their humor lies a deeper reflection of our age: the tension between entertainment and life, between comfort and action, between the flickering light of the television and the living fire of human endeavor.

The ancients did not have television, yet they too knew the power of distraction. In Rome, emperors gave the people “bread and circuses,” spectacles of combat and theater to keep them pacified while the empire’s heart decayed. The crowds cheered, their eyes fixed upon the arena, even as corruption spread through the Senate and legions faltered at the borders. So too today, the screen becomes the new circus, holding our gaze while time—our most precious treasure—slips silently away. Holm’s word sad is not only a jest but a lament, for he feels the truth: too much watching can make us spectators of life rather than participants in it.

And yet, let us not scorn TV entirely. For within those stories—be they comedies like Parks and Rec or satires like 30 Rock—there is laughter, wisdom, and the shared culture of a people. Just as Homer sang epics to bind the Greeks together, so too do these shows create common ground, shared jokes, and collective memory. The danger lies not in watching, but in excess—in becoming captive to the shadows on the wall, like the prisoners of Plato’s cave, mistaking illusion for life.

Consider the tale of the samurai of Japan, warriors disciplined in both sword and spirit. They enjoyed poetry, theater, and song, yet they knew that art must balance action. A samurai who read endlessly but never trained his body would fall in battle. A warrior who fought without reflection would become a brute. So too must we, in the age of screens, seek balance: to take joy in the stories of Modern Family or The Office, but not to let them consume the hours meant for creation, for labor, for love.

Holm’s confession that he is “still kinda watching” reflects the endless pull of habit. This too the ancients warned against. Habit is like a river: easy to drift upon, hard to swim against. To watch without end is to drift, while to choose with intention is to steer. To rise from the couch and craft, to serve, to love—that is to swim, to live. It is not the watching that is sad, but the surrender of will.

The lesson is clear: let us honor the stories we love, but let us not forget to write our own. Entertainment is a gift, but it is not a substitute for life. We must laugh with the comedians, we must weep with the dramas, but then we must rise, walk into the world, and act. The great sagas of history were not lived by those who merely watched, but by those who dared to step beyond comfort and into struggle.

So take this practical counsel: watch, but with measure. Choose the tales that uplift, that teach, that bind you to others. Then turn off the screen and live—walk among your people, labor with your hands, love with your whole heart. For when your days are counted, it will not be the shows you watched that define you, but the story you lived.

Thus Anders Holm’s lighthearted remark becomes ancient wisdom. The sadness is not in laughter, not in stories, but in forgetting that life itself is the greatest tale, and we are each its author, its actor, and its hero.