In a time when technology is so prominent and communication is a lifeline, it seems like television is losing its popularity to prime sources like the internet and apps as a form of gathering information. However, there is something about the screen that draws us in and demands we keep our eyes locked on the moving images.

If you wanted to watch a television show before the days of DVR and Netflix, you had to plan your time around the show or else you would miss it and quite possibly never have the opportunity to see that particular episode ever again — an experience that is emotionally scarring.

However, the television gods blessed us with platforms no longer exclusive to the TV itself, and now we all have a healthy relationship with television shows (“healthy,” of course, meaning watching eight consecutive hours of a show on Netflix at night when you have an exam the next morning). The real question remains, though: What is the purpose of watching television shows when we have our own lives to worry about?

It is _because_ we have our own lives to worry about.

The world is full of terrible and beautiful things, and it is typically far easier to pay more attention to those on the negative side of the spectrum than the brighter side. When we watch television shows, we are pulled out of our own reality and placed into another for thirty minutes or an hour.

For however much time, we do not think about terrorism or political discourse. Instead, we are compelled to watch and listen and worry about somebody else’s narrative and not our own. We want to know what will happen to our favorite characters, or we want to be a certain character. We want to love that tough antagonist who surprisingly has feelings. We laugh at the stupid jokes, forget to breathe when the situation gets scary, and cry when our favorites die — or worse, get their hearts broken. When the credits roll, we get lost in a period of time where we forget where we are, who we are and what we are, and we can only reminiscence on the elegance of what we just saw and devoured.

That is the beauty of art: the ability to distract us from ourselves.