The Charm of Black and White TV and the Pursuit of Simpler Joys

Be Happy

The Sears Moment

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“Got any black and white TV sets?” I asked the Sears salesman in the late 1990s. You would think I asked for a butter churn.

It was as if I’d whacked him with a rolled-up newspaper. His eyes widened, his mouth twitched, and I could almost hear his brain screeching to a halt. Black and white TVs? In the era of flashy color sets and the dawn of flat screens? I might as well have asked for a horse-drawn carriage in the automotive aisle.

Beside me, my friend stood frozen, wearing a puzzled expression that mirrored the salesman’s disbelief, equal parts confusion and secondhand embarrassment, as if he were silently questioning whether I’d just stepped out of a time machine.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t entirely joking.

I grew up in the 1970s, a time when our family’s black and white TV was the center of our living room universe. It wasn’t just a screen; it was a portal to Saturday morning cartoons, grainy moon landings, and sitcoms that crackled with genuine laughter from live audiences. Those shows had a raw, unfiltered magic. The absence of color didn’t dim the experience, it amplified it. My imagination filled in the hues, painting Lucy Ball’s red hair or the green of Gilligan’s Island in my mind.

But even then, not everything was pure.

Over time, live audiences, with their spontaneous, heartfelt laughter, were replaced by recorded laugh tracks. What emerged was canned laughter: artificial, inserted, and inauthentic. Real reactions matter. Not scripted cues waved in by flags. Fake laughter distorts the viewer’s perception, shaping responses that aren’t truly felt.

Yet in those early days, the simplicity of our grayscale TV still shone through. It allowed us to connect with the heart of the stories, unfiltered, unpolished, and largely untouched by artifice.

Life felt simpler then, not because it was perfect, but because we found joy in what we had.

Years after that encounter, I heard about a quirky attempt to bring back black and white TVs. I don’t know if that baffled salesman had a hand in it, but I like to think my question planted a seed. Maybe someone else out there craved the nostalgia, the uncluttered charm of a world in grayscale. Seeing those sets pop up, even briefly, felt like a little victory, a nod to a time when happiness didn’t come with a thousand channels and a Wi-Fi password.

The Moral of the Story

The moral isn’t that we should ditch our 4K screens and stream “I Love Lucy” in monochrome (though, honestly, it’s tempting). It’s that happiness often hides in the simple things, and we have to chase it with intention.

The 1970s weren’t a utopia, there were struggles, twists, and plenty of bad haircuts, but we leaned into the good. We gathered around that flickering box, laughed at corny jokes, and didn’t feel like we were missing out.

Today, it’s easy to drown in unhappiness. Social media bombards us with outrage, comparison, and curated lives that feel out of reach. The world’s problems seem louder, heavier, more pixel-perfect in high definition.

But I believe we can still find our black and white TV moments, those small, unpolished joys that don’t need a filter to shine.

A shared laugh with a friend.

A quiet evening with a book.

A memory that warms you like a rerun of your favorite show.

Striving for the Happy

So, how do we do it? How do we cut through the noise and strive for the happy?

Start small.

Turn off the notifications for an hour and play a board game with your kids. Call someone you love just to hear their voice.

Watch an old movie, not because it’s “better,” but because it reminds you of a time when you felt lighter.

Create something, anything, that feels like you: a drawing, a recipe, a story. These are the grayscale moments that ground us.

The world will always have its twists, just like it did in the ‘70s. But we get to choose where we focus. I’m not saying we should ignore the hard stuff, life demands we face it. But we can balance it with the happy, the simple, the real.

That’s what my black and white TV taught me: joy doesn’t need to be complicated to be true.

A Deeper Connection

And maybe that joy points us to something deeper, a connection that’s been there since the beginning.

Moments of communion with God echo a timeless rhythm of intentional dialogue, first witnessed in Genesis when Adam walked and spoke with God in Eden’s garden. Even after the Fall fractured that intimacy, God’s voice persisted, pursuing humanity with unwavering purpose. He spoke to Cain, confronting his sin after Abel’s murder; to Noah, guiding him to build the ark before the flood; to Abraham, forging a covenant of promise; and to Moses, delivering the Ten Commandments.

These encounters reveal a God who seeks us out, inviting us into a sacred conversation, one that shapes history and restores the soul. Like those grayscale moments, these divine encounters remind us to pause, listen, and find joy in the presence of something greater.

So, here’s to the salesman who didn’t get my question but maybe, just maybe, passed it along.

Here’s to the dreamers who tried to bring back those clunky sets. And here’s to all of us, searching for our own piece of simpler times in a technicolor world.

Your Turn

What’s your black and white TV moment?

Share it below, I’d love to hear.

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