The Virtues of Comfort-Bingeing
In this very singular times, streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video deliver a better part of the means to save our sanity. They successfully distract us from the worries that are beyond the proverbial four walls symbolizing our currently only existing anti-dote.
Moreover, even the limited content that is now getting released does give us the essential feeling that the world outside is still turning even if we don’t seem to experience that anymore in our isolation.
Nevertheless, the fear of reaching the bottom of our own thoughtfully curated Netflix playlist is even so real as it is dreading.
What will happen if there is nothing new to watch? Is there an urgent need for hopes and prayers for a bonus episode of “The Tiger King”?
The dire need for disctraction
My wife and I loved to spend the evenings with friends and neighbors. We were getting together for a well-cooked dinner, enjoying food and each other’s company. Just occasionally meeting up for a movie night, planning to bing through “Star Trek Picard” in one session as a group of longtime fans.
All this stopped all so suddenly a few weeks ago. All of a sudden, it was just the two of us in dire need of distraction in the evening after a day of work sidelined by petrifying news continually popping up everywhere we looked.
Still, there was the internet, and yet, there was so much content on our lists that we always wanted to watch when the times would be right. Since that time had finally but unwillingly had come, both of us almost thankfully started to work on that watchlists.
Finally, we would be able to bing through “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Hunters.” At the beginning of the day already looking forward to some excitement in the evening.
Comfort-Binging needs training wheels
But already after the first episodes, we felt miserable. Bad night sleeps and all too surreal and frightening nightmares. A horrid dystopian future and gruesome stories of the past turned out to be the best worst choices to seek relief in that distraction.
I quickly realized that “comfort binging” needed training wheels. We found them in re-watching our childhood-favorites. Starting four weeks ago at the end of the day, just us two gathered in front of the TV and enjoyed a couple of episodes of “Friends.”
Ending the day with some heart-warming narrations of friendship and laughter proved to be the perfect remedy for good night sleep in this dreading times.
Thus neat little psychological trick of letting the emotional party of our brains recall the emotional state that we were in when watching those episodes the first time.
The overwhelming omnipresence of social media
I even went further, putting on “Kind of Queens” while preparing lunch and dinner. Trying everything to keep my mind from being alone with itself recapturing every moment of the past weeks of isolation ore imagining the details of a disrupted future.
I left the omnipresence of social media to itself when I just felt overwhelmed by everything out there and found comfort in watching again the 1950’s interpretations of Agatha Christie’s “Miss Marple” and a so brilliant Margaret Rutherford portraying the rustic detective. And without consciously knowing it, my mind traveled back in time to revisit the emotions of a peaceful childhood.
Even already knowing what will happen, if Ross and Rachel will finally get together or who murdered the woman on the passing train, did not spoil the fun. It even relieved me of the subconscious mental stress we are experiencing in that suspense.
And even though my wife and I are already counting down the last episodes of “Friends” in the current days, we know that the “Gilmore Girls” will keep us both happy and sane fort another month of isolation — still hoping in all the other hours of the day we won’t need to. Hoping that betters days will come sooner rather than later.
