20. Friday Nights at 9:00 p.m.

It's "Gold Rush" time. 

I'm not the biggest TV buff I know, but I do kinda dig Discovery Channel's reality show, "Gold Rush." Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but each week I watch the show hoping these guys hit the motherload somewhere deep in the bowels of Quartz Creek, Alaska.  Instead, I watch for an hour and discover that when it comes to gold mining, if it can break down, fall apart, or go wrong--it will.  The show could be called "A Series of Frustrating Events."  So why do I like this?

I'll never be a gold miner.  I'll never know what it is really like to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness.  I'll never drive gargantuan dump trucks, dozers, or front end loaders.  But the show does give the impression that its showing us a little of what it might be like to mine gold.  It's intoxicating.  It's maddening.  It's enough to make you thankful that no matter how bad of a day you're having, you probably didn't have as many things go wrong as these guys did in any one hour show.

Yesterday I quoted from Rasselas. Might as well go for it again, since it seems relevant here.  Prince Rasselas is bored in the Happy Valley--bored because he has everything he wants. While it might seem like happiness is getting everything you want, the prince points out that he is unhappy precisely because he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to strive after, nothing to desire.  Rasselas says, "I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue."

I like this TV show because these guys are relentlessly pursuing gold. I'm not all that interested in relentlessly pursuing gold, myself.  But I do know that we all need something to pursue.  Every week I watch them endure disappointment after disappointment, and only occasionally a small triumph or a glimmer of hope.  And yet they press on.  They seem happy.  I think it's because they have something to pursue.  I need something to pursue, too.

So I keep on the lookout for little things that might awaken me from my contented slumber, and I pursue them.  A hundred free throws in a row.  Thirty unbroken pull-ups.  A doctorate.  A new humanities major. 350 blog entries in a year--one a day with a reasonable assumption that there will be a dozen or so days when I'm somewhere with no Internet connection. The entire Bible in 6 months.  That sort of thing.

There is that inevitable let down once you've reached some goal.  If these guys strike it rich by the end of the mining season, the show won't be quite the same for me any more.  I hope they do, but I also know that if they do, that's the end of the show.  I'll make a hundred free throws in a row again someday soon. Then what?  Do it again.  Hit 50 3 pointers in a row.  Who knows.  I just know I'm the kind of person who is happiest struggling and striving my way towards something.  Kind of like the guys on "Gold Rush," I guess. Call it restlessness if you want, but it beats the boredom of happy valley.