On this journey of life, we pick up so much along the way. Either through our relations with our family, neighbours, friends, enemies, or the media, we are constantly absorbing new data whether we realise it or not. Most times, it’s the useless and irrelevant ones that stick and gets processed into information that then forms and shapes our ideas and opinions on issues we face on a daily and periodic basis.

For me, visual and audio media are two of the most powerful instruments in the world today. Our values, beliefs and sometimes, morals are all formed through this avenue. What we see and what we listen to are so important as they are absorbed into our sub-conscious and then processed and kept for the right moment.

I realised just how much what I see and hear influences my pattern of thoughts recently. I was thinking about relationships and what my expectations of them were. It was at that moment that I realised that I had a ‘Hollywood-style’ mentality. A guy who would be caring and in tune with my every mood; who would always know the right thing to say. A man who is strong yet sensitive; who is a ‘man’s man’ with his friends whilst being a caring and domesticated man with me. The focus was firmly on me and what he could give me; an expectation too much for any human being to handle. That is unless you are acting in a movie!

Watching movies, the guy always gets his girl and vice versa. Over the weekend, I was forced to watch ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for the millionth time.  As always, the girl got her man even though she was poor, of lower class status, stubborn, less ‘attractive’ a prospect than the girl his mother wanted him to marry. That’s just how it is in the movies!

Real life is not always so straightforward. It’s a 50-50 chance you’ll get the man and even if you happen to get the lucky half, it’s then another
struggle to keep the man in the face of all the pressures of life mixed with the class issues. Yet when I weighed my expectations of a relationship, even with my knowledge of all this, it favoured the ‘Hollywood’ setting.

We could call it hope. Hope that we would get the best rather than the real.  We could call it delusions. Isn’t that what ‘romance’ is, a big mirage?
Whatever we call it, the fact still remains that what we see and hear influences our day-to-day life more than we might give it credit for.

We could use another example. I’ve observed from those around me that whenever you watch a sexual scene, whether or not you realise its effects on you, it does affect you. You tend to think more about sex after seeing a scene or a picture that is sexual in nature. This is not undermining other avenues that can peak your sexual appetites but the basis for all still lies in what they see or hear.

It’s not just movies however that can get you in a frenzy. Music, in some respects, is even more powerful. A mental picture, however hard, can be erased. Music is the only tool that seeps into your very depth whether you give it permission or not. How many times have you just started singing a song after walking out of a shop you spent five minutes in and the song is just stuck in you? Or even the background music to a silly advert? There are so many examples to this but the main point to note is that music is a language all on its own and it transcends nationality, colour, gender, or even background or culture.

Some might listen to a song and get pictures of a previous relationship or a time in their life, good or bad. For some, it could be a song that just gets you in the mood for love. Others might listen to a song and feel it doesn’t affect them but find that their thoughts and mood is changed by it. For me, that speaks of the power music has over the individual.

We could sit here and debate this all day long. The bottom line is, what we see and hear affects us and care must be taken in what we deposit into ourselves. Once I got that realisation, there were certain movies I knew I couldn’t watch, certain songs I couldn’t listen to. This wasn’t because I lacked self-control but because I believe ‘prevention is better than cure’.

I like being in control of my feelings and emotions. I like the fact that my relationships are all the better now that all false expectations have been
exposed and destroyed. I like the fact that my thought process is clearer without the pressures to fit into someone else’s box as dictated to me by the media.