quality time

I heard a writer for a soap opera recently comment that he would get letters from viewers addressed to specific soap opera characters. The viewers would express some pretty deeply-felt emotion about the character, and they would do it by writing to the characters as if they were real people. The writer said something to the effect, “And why not? These viewers probably spend more quality time on a daily basis with the soap opera characters than with their own families.”

It made me wonder: what’s quality time? Maybe what the writer said is true. When we watch TV we pay attention carefully to everything that’s going on. We don’t want to miss any details or we might lose track of the story line. But when I’m interacting with my own family members I tend to be more concerned about what I need to tell them then in what they want to tell me. How often do I pay as much attention to what’s going on in their lives as I do to the details of what’s happening with a TV or movie character? Who’s really getting my quality time?