Why in the world do you watch that?

WORLD:

I suppose this isn’t such a “closet secret” now that I am writing about it here (and I’ve written about it elsewhere), but my inexplicable junk TV go-to is “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

I realize most of you who know me will ask, “WHY IN THE WORLD?”

I don’t understand it myself, but here’s my quick explanation (not fact-checked by the way, just plucked out of my head).

I wish I could drop tons of money on a party for the most frivolous of reasons. Have a good hair day? Line up the caterer, STAT.

I wish I had that kind of platform. (And I am not discounting this blog and my social media presence, which I’ve cultivated for a decade now into a bit of a platform.) But a “get people like Alice Marie Johnson out of prison and meet Van Jones and truly give other people in need of #JusticeReform options and hope” kind of platform.

I wish, when someone was asking me a mundane question such as “do you prefer French dressing or thousand island” that I had full wardrobe and makeup for the vignette where I answer.

I wish I didn’t have to worry about money (or choose to) in the way I do.

Although I disagree with most of what they do (how they dress, how they conduct themselves, the excess of it all), there are a few things that show their ultimate humanity.

Their trip to Armenia and efforts to raise genocide awareness come to mind.

Kim’s desire to become an attorney (ridiculed as it is … what if she DOES and she DOES make a difference?)

*** end of five minutes ***

I often think of Kim’s second marriage (I think it lasted 71 days) and the THREE Vera Wang gowns she wore throughout the ceremony and reception. I think of how many people that money could have fed, how much it truly could have done. (My recent week doing the #RationChallenge makes that even more of a prominent question in my head, but it’s her money — I’m as irritated at the snubbed nose at the sanctity of marriage as I am about the money.)

I often think of the rather unsavory road that led to the Kris/Robert marriage in the first place. Who knew that could end up being a launching pad for an “empire”?

I also know I would hate the constant public attention. It drives me a little nuts when they complain about the pressure of the public scrutiny, because without it they would be just another extended family in California. (I do, however, feel for their little kids who have literally never known a life outside the cameras and weren’t given a choice.)

Besides the platform part and its potential to help causes with just the dial of a phone or the swipe of a credit card, I realize I have all I need even if I don’t have all I want.

I probably need to remind myself that platforms don’t have to be Kardashian-level public to be effective. Perhaps it’s not a matter so much of keeping up as it is of keeping on (doing what I’m doing).

Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)