Rearrange Your Furniture

In the iconic sit-com Friends, Joey is dumbfounded to learn that someone does not own a television and in utter shock and confusion he replies by saying, "You don't own a TV? What's all your furniture pointed at??"

While this scene is an example of the relatable, clever humor of the show and it always makes me laugh, it also begs an important question for us to consider in our own lives. What is our furniture pointed at?

In most homes, the TV is located in the room we call "the living room." The room where we commune with friends and family, where we spend our time, let off steam, relax, even work from home. And in this useful and frequented room is a TV. I would, along with Joey, observe that in most homes, the very set up of the living room (the direction in which our furniture is facing) makes the TV the center of our living room. Would it be too far to say that, as a consequence, this technology becomes the center of our day to day lives?

Think about it. When you sit on your couch, your TV is directly in front of you: instantly reminding you of the shows you could binge, the channels you could click through, the movies on your "to watch" list. Similarly, when your family or friends all gather in the living room, it is only natural that we think "Well... we might as well turn something on."

Neil Postman observed many of the effects of this technology and wrote about them extensively in his renowned book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He said, "Television is the command center of the new epistemology." I suspect that Postman would also agree that television has become the command center of our day to day lives.

This observation is supported in statistics. On average, American's watch three hours of TV a day. This may seem like a relatively small amount of time until you consider that in our 24 hour day, we sleep during the night, work or go to school for the majority of the day, run our errands and make dinner, scroll online for another three hours a day, and by that time... we don't have a whole lot of time left. So, at the end of the day when we have finally checked everything off of our to-do list, is it really healthy that we sit down and stare at a screen of pixels for three hours most nights?

Now, let me be clear that I do not blame individuals for falling into these habits. Our culture has instilled this lifestyle into many of us. I am just suggesting that maybe there is a better way, and maybe we should consider the direction our furniture is facing. You may not have to throw your TV out the upstairs window, but many of us definitely need to re-center our lives. Here are some ways to do that:

• Put beautiful art on the wall.
• Face your furniture towards each other.
• Unplug the TV when it isn't movie night.
• Store decks of cards or board games in your living room.
• Replace your TV with a bookshelf.

These small, seemingly insignificant changes in your living room can have exponential effects on the way you live your life. Maybe you won't find my suggestions helpful, but I would encourage you to think of some that you will. Lets' re-center our lives to actively do the things that make life good, rather than sitting and watching them play out on a screen. So, first, rearrange your furniture. Not only will this benefit your mind, body, and soul, but it will also cause Joey to make his wide-eyed *I'm so shocked, I don't understand, what is happening face.* Which is always priceless.