Family Adventures!

by Deacon Stephen Bowling

Okay, I must confess my age . . . I am a child of the late Sixties/ early Seventies, born in 1965 and a TV addict pretty much from the very beginning. (I can remember watching on our old black and white TV some of Star Trek’s Third Season when it first aired in 1969; I was just shy of age four.)

One of those formative, “masterpiece” shows for me (as I think it was for so many around my age thanks to the miracle of syndication) was “Lost In Space”; that gem of a goofy, fun, family-friendly show about a cool family exploring Outer Space together, created by the late Irwin Allen.

Yes, I wanted to be like Will Robinson and have a cool Robot as a best friend, but that’s a story for another day . . .

I recently acquired the Complete Series on Blu-Ray and am actually surprised at how well the show has aged. Recognizing the thrill of nostalgia it holds for me and how that might taint my viewpoint, I nevertheless find that the writing was actually fairly excellent, the concept, while goofy sometimes, was almost always simply FUN . . . and more importantly the family structure on which the show firmly sat was always presented as front and center in every episode.

Talk about a family friendly show! A family which actually enjoyed being together, who would always keep each other first in their hearts and in their actions, and who could explore the wonders of creation together was the very central premise of the show every week! How cool was that?

I find that family adventure time together is something we often tend to think of at this time of the year, as vacations are scheduled and road-trips become our well-deserved “break” from everyday life. But one of the things that the “Space Family Robinson” reminded me of when I was watching some of the episodes recently is that “Family Adventure” is not something just for special events or for when the schedule permits . . . it’s for always.

The Robinson Family lived their adventures together constantly . . . for them, everything was an adventure! Now I know that’s how the show was intended to be structured of course, but is there not a lesson there for all of us?

Should our families not have a constant diet of “adventure” rather than just as an occasional treat?

It’s worth some scrutiny as to how we live our lives and of the activities we frequently partake in to see, just how how much family “adventure” we have. With the “summer frame of mind” which we are all now enjoying, perhaps we might consider some dose of regular family adventure making a frequent appearance on our calendar. Something as simple as going to a new restaurant together or finding a new walking location . . . as long as whatever it is can be taken together as a family, that all-important “togetherness” experience is something pretty much guaranteed to always rejuvenate the spirit.

And I’m sure that even a marathon of “Lost In Space” episodes watched together would count.