At work today, I had my 15 minute break starting at 4:45, except that I got a longish call right before that and didn't go on break 'till about 4:50. In the break room/cafeteria, there's not much to do when you don't know anyone else on break at the same time as you, except eating (which is one of my favorite activities anyway) and watching the one tv in the very large room. The TV is usually on ABC, I believe, or at least that's the only station ID I actually notice during the shows or commercials. So, I caught the very end of a Montel show on stalking laws and then the preview for and first few minutes of today's Oprah.

Now, I don't even have a TV, much less choose to watch TV often, but when I'm in the break room, don't know anyone else there, and don't have phone calls to make or other things to occupy my mind so fully as to not be listening to outside noises, I tend to notice what's on TV. Today specifically, I was standing (I'm in the midst of an eleven hour workday as part of a very full workweek including overtime, such as I'll be working both next week and the week after that without any eleven hour stretches) and watching, as I mentioned, the few minutes of talk shows that were on during my break.

The Montel show didn't do much, because it was just the very end and I didn't hear any of the tragically ended stories, just one of a woman who got away from her obsessive ex-husband after being held at knifepoint. Oprah, on the other hand, took me from being in a very good, slightly hyper state of mind, into literally being on the verge of tears with an audibly noticible crack in my voice when I returned from my break. It was a show about the worst days in the lives of two women; Days when one woman's children were severely harmed in a car explosion of some sort and the other woman's children were murdered by her ex-husband.

Obviously, there is no further explanation needed for why I was on the verge of tears when I returned to my workstation.

I'm currently reading a book I got from the used book sale section of my library called A Time To Heal. This is a book written for adult children of alcoholics, and has been a remarkably (and surprisingly) great read, very helpful to me. Many of the books written to this target audience have not appealed to me so well... thus I was very glad to have come across this one. (A divine appointment, I'm sure.) At any rate, one of the things that the author mentions in this book is the concept of how if we didn't have at least some level of denial in our lives, no human would ever survive; We must, to a certain extent, deny the darkness and danger of our existance in order to function in a world that really isn't all that bad most of the time. If we were constantly aware of and focused on the incredibly horrid capabilities of humans, and the disgustingly sad possabilities of nature and other external circumstances, we would never make it to the age of comprehension.

Today's Oprah topics made me that much more aware of this concept.Not that I wasn't already understanding what he meant, but because my work happens to be so habitual, I was able to block out my sadness while doing my work and, much later, while on breaks as well. However, had I not been able to do so, I would dwell in the horror I felt watching that preview. Perhaps had I seen the whole show, there would have been a certain amount of redemptive value attached to that experience, such as seeing how the women have healed and admiring their strength. However, I only caught the stories of the actual tragedies, and then had to be back in my cubicle.

Thus is my reaction.