If you?re like me, a single, urbanite, pseudo-intellectual raised on the TV set, you find your brain has been pockmarked by pop culture. You are as apt to quote Mr. Spock as Shakespeare, Seinfeld as Socrates.
And like a dog chewing new slippers, that?s bad, bad, bad because pop culture, and its favorite delivery system, television, are a big reason that 10 percent of the U.S. population is divorced, a number that has been rising since 1980 (learn more happy news at www.divorcemag.com!)
Pop culture exists in a supercharged, 0-to-60-in-a-second world where images zip by so fast, it?s all nearly subliminal. I?m reminded of the ?80s sci-fi series, “Max Headroom,” where the ubiquitous Zik-Zak corporation jams so much into a single video ad, called a “blipvert,” it causes the viewers? heads to explode.
Our exposure to pop culture has made us instant-gratification addicts with attention spans as broad as a gnat?s tuckus.
So what?s this got to do with divorce and all that?
Simple. Relationships take time. Getting to the true essence of a person is like panning for gold ? a long, laborious process, and what you find is typically pyrite, not precious.
Sharon Seal has and she helps others do the same. A local business coach, Sharon helps her clients “take the time and space to think about who they are. Getting to know yourself is critical in business, and in life in general. Far too many people take the time to discover what they value in life, what they think about from A to Z, rather than just parroting back something they see in a 10-second blurb on CNN,” she said.
A Baltimore native, Dan Collins is a 43-year-old single, public relations professional.
