Learning from a TV

The image above is of a “Facebook Memory” I was served up this morning. It tells a tale that turned out to be much more involved than it seemed at the time.

Eight years ago, our TV blew up. It was repaired in the end, something I talked around ten days later, in what some might argue was one of my better blog posts (and by “some”, I mean me), before the repairs were actually completed.

I still have that TV. However, as recently as last year Nigel was saying that he'd just never seen a TV with as good a picture (and for many years he'd looked, believe me…), so he didn't want to replace it. For anyone who knew Nigel, this would seem to be out of character for him—he always wanted the newest, bestest technology. But he wanted the best technology most of all, and he felt the TV we already had was exactly that. So, for him, keeping that TV for so long was the perfectly logical thing to do.

I was thinking recently that I'll inevitably have to replace it, and how such things tend to happen when one can least afford it (like, after I retire in a few years). But TVs are so much less expensive than they were when we bought this one (and they don't even make plasma TVs any more, as far as I know), so it wouldn't be a huge burden—though the new TV might not last for 9 years and counting, with or without repairs. But, then, I might not, either. If I've learned anything over the past year, it's that. I'll just enjoy what I have now, and plan for the future without taking its existence for granted.

See? You really CAN learn a lot from TV…

This post is a revised and expanded version of something I posted on my personal Facebook, which isn’t public.