Celebrities Schmelebrities

This morning, I had a realization:

I am addicted to celebrity gossip, photos and stories. And the madness must stop.

Now, I do believe it is okay to have guilty pleasures here and there. However, when I was checking out my usual websites this morning, I found myself feeling very bored and, well, shallow. Every day I have an internet routine: Facebook, Etsy, Gmail, blogs, Chabad.org, more blogs (I'm a total creeper... haha), more Facebook, random Jewish sites, and the news. In there is also a lot of TMZ and People.com. How I got addicted to celebrity news is a weird story: in college, my roommate sent me a link to a picture of Jocelyn Wildenstein, the socialite who had plastic surgery to make her appearance look like a cat. Well, the morbid curiosity I had for such people got the better of me, and I began looking at more celebrity news sites on a regular basis. So, why now, after a couple years, have I changed my tune?

What first drew me to these kinds of stories were the invasive nature to them - juicy details, gossip and stories of people I will never know in person, of course, but are exciting to see on TV and in movies. Okay, so, what the heck do I care about their personal lives? I suppose when I saw that first picture of Ms. Wildenstein, I was horrified - but like I said before, it was morbid curiosity. I liked that feeling of having "insight" to other people, even if I didn't personally know them. Lame, I know. What I am beginning to realize now, though, is that I need to spend a lot more time looking inward, rather than into strangers' lives. Reading about a celebrity's new hair color will not do me any good, and frankly, it just isn't important.

Now that I'm trying to fill my life with more meaningful ventures, I am spending a lot more time reading about Judaism and enjoying stories with Jewish messages. More Tanakh, more "how to live Jewishly" type books. The deep emotions I feel while reading, for example, Kohelet, is nothing compared to the brain-numbing garbage on those other websites. How could I possibly compare spending 20 minutes reading "news" on TMZ to 20 minutes reading Tehillim?

I'm thinking of it like I would my daily diet: concentration of healthy foods is most important. What is better for the body, one apple or one ice cream bar? I could eat a lunch of cookies, cola, and chips and feel stuffed, but would it *really* satisfy me like it would to have a nice salad or baked chicken? No. In order to feel healthy, in all aspects, I must saturate my life with things that are fulfilling - especially morally. So, while I may enjoy seeing photos of celebrities without their makeup or hearing about who's dating who, in the end it doesn't really matter. Those stories will disappear just as quickly as they came (wish I could say the same for Mel Gibson, though), but Jewish learning will always stay with me... and most importantly, it will make me want to learn even *more*.