When the power went off
The sun has come and gone. The drive home was black and eerie. My phone was dead and my bags were heavy as I darted to the car with extreme hopes that the black blanket surrounding me just meant that the people inside the houses with black windows were asleep, an early night in before Halloween.
I blasted the heat and tried plugging in my phone, my only life line to my world. What is wrong with that sentence? I was so desperate to charge up, plug in to plug out, and connect with someone who had decent Wi-Fi or could readily feed off of their data stream that I couldn’t focus on the fact that I hadn’t ate since 1pm or the fact that my mom was getting surgery the next day.
I drove with intensity through streets of other bored and desperate people, probably wishing they could embrace the night without stimulation, but couldn’t hide the sorrow when they couldn’t engage with their keyboards and screens.
We are true results of the billion dollar advance in technology. We are so glued to our technology and are in awe of our technological advances in creating a more virtual, shrunken world that we forget the true miracle it is to breathe, to have a heartbeat. Where is the wonder in the simple things in life, like enjoying a cup of coffee or making eye contact with a total stranger on the T and saying, Hi, how are you? and meaning it? How do we put truth and good back into our tangled lives of digital relationships, selfishness, and technological stimulance?
I remember the night before the power went off. The hum of the storm was only a small voice before it plateaued into a nasty whirl of wind, water, and lightning. The power shut off near midnight. I remember it had been out for 3 minutes before my phone made a ding sound when the power cord no longer provided it with its nourishment for a sustainable charge. The sound pulled me awake, knocking my body out of its natural rhythm of gentle sleep. My nightly routine became rooted in technology; the sick silhouette of scrolling through social media because books lost their delicious taste and the short spurts of text and images of Instagram became my new, nightly dessert before bed. I felt guilt before I felt pleasure when I chose my phone over my book.
It was a heavy, burdening feeling. Not the one you feel when you look into the night sky and feel grateful for simply being present; no, we get those rarely in this culture. It is the sensation of guilt when you see someone with less than you, making you wish you could do more to resolve injustice, like giving a nutricious meal to a suffering child, or donating a few hundred dollars to cure a sweeping illness.
It is the same deep seed of guilt that rises when you steal a look at someone on public transportation and you immediately fall victim to pity and remorse, guilty for your own goods and intentions in life, knowing there is so much that isn’t fair, that you simply can’t do much a lot of the time. Technology doesn’t tie us together, empathy does.
I hope that other people from different walks of life have enough to look into the sky and feel it, too; the sense of gratefulness for the peace that nature can bring to us as humans. That makes me feel lighter.
Our addictive tendencies and attachments to technology drag our finger tips back to our keyboards and hone us into a bright screen of games, media, news, and entertainment. We forget all about the present moment and give into our instinctual and lazy tendencies to text, scroll, and type. We fall to our phones, fingers first, and then fall second to our internal guilt as it pulls us down, our phones grasped tightly in hand.
Instinctually, the same way one drinks water when they’re thirsty, I grabbed for my phone when the charge clicked off and spotted the lightning bolt charge sign disappeared. The fan had shut off over my head, too, which is louder than my phone. Yet. I didn’t hear it click off at all. The white noise came second to the short ding from my phone, letting me know the power was out.
There was a brief, brief moment of relief followed by a feeling of freedom I typically feel when I throw on my running shoes and burst out the door running after being trapped in the office. I felt release when I let go of the attachment to my phone for a night and immersed myself in knowing that I could wake up, and the power would likely be back on again. Security in a blanket of blackness.
The comfort, although small, in knowing I was unable to connect to my virtual world for just a moment was a reminder of the human need to rest and hide from the busy goings of life.
We can’t forget the fortune we have in our fragile, impermanent lives. We are lucky that we have electricity to power running water, power heating systems and air conditioners, and pump light and life into our phones and technology that we spend so much of our time in front of. Although the loss of power was only 48 hours in total, the split reminder of how delicate our lives are helped ground me a bit more. It brought me back to what matters, what I need to survive to maintain a sense of meaning and basic functionality in life.
It isn’t my phone or the light, it is the joy and the company of my friends and family, the light of day to power my activities and perspective of the world outside, and the hope in knowing that the light will return. There is enough meaning in the immediacy of the moment to power on my inner light, to spread to others in my circles, too, and to those that don’t always see it shining so brightly.
So let the guilt go, let any negativity go. We can’t do much but make the most of what’s in front us. Learn to be in the present and see the joy and beauty in it, even without the light.
