I used to like watching soap operas on t.v. Before it used to be those silly American ones, you know, the ones with the ridiculous story lines, crazy plots, mad twin brothers or sisters, people coming back to life, becoming possessed, losing their memory, plotting against each other... and so on and so forth. Every day I would be ready to watch it, that is until I realized that nothing really happened at all and the same thing would be repeated each day, just in a different manner. When you actually thought about it, the same old stories were going on and on, not for days, or weeks, or even months, but for years. It was frustrating!
Thankfully I stopped wasting my precious time with that nonsense, but it didn’t end there. I was still caught up in the trap. I started watching South African soaps, and when they just began on t.v. they were very different from the American ones I used to watch. Here they dealt with important issues such as HIV/AIDS, racism, affirmative action workplace policies, poverty, etc. An embodiment of all the issues that Post Apartheid South African society has to deal with on an everyday basis. This made me believe that these soaps were worth watching. 
Recently though I stopped watching those too, because the same type of frustration was beginning to fester. I’d watch my favourite Afrikaans soap 7de Laan (which means 7th Avenue in English), every single day and by the end of the week the same thing that happened on Monday would still not have been resolved. I guess that’s the point of soapies right? They have to keep the viewers addicted; if they resolve everything quickly then nobody will want to watch. I’m so grateful to Almighty Allah for making it easy for me to stop watching these things because now I am able to see exactly what a big waste of time it really is.
Last week I went to visit my grandmother, and she just loves watching soapies. So on two occasions while I was there she was watching soapies that I used to watch. On both of these occasions I was very disappointed to see that South African soaps, are becoming just as crazy as the American ones. The first time I was surprised to see that someone who had very clearly died was back in the soap, as usual some crazy plot was written up where he “came back from the dead”, you know he wasn’t really dead, everyone just thought he was. The second time, the “bad girl” of the soap returned after years just to bring up old wounds and cause more drama. How do we so easily accept the nonsense they feed us, I wonder?
So yes, I am now totally convinced that soap operas are the biggest waste of time. Think about it, how much time would be people have if they weren’t watching these things every day, can you calculate quickly? At least one hour every day right, so that’s 5 hours a week, and 20 hours a month and 240 hours a year. That’s a lot of time, and that’s the minimum! Now imagine how many other better things we could be doing in that time. Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?
And you know what else, on top of wasting time watching it, you also don’t have to worry about wasting time thinking about it, or talking to others about it, or reading up about it, and whatever else comes with it. Gosh, I feel so bad for all the time that I’ve wasted with these things. The best thing is that when you stop watching it, you don’t even miss it, so you most definitely don’t need to be watching it. This is just my experience, I'm sure that many of you would agree with me though.
Image 1 from: http://www.tvrage.com/Days_of_our_Lives
Image 2 from: http://www.tvsa.co.za/mastershowinfo.asp?mastershowid=298
