Feeling Powerless

We had an interesting experience last week.

A massive storm nearby, which fortunately didn’t impact our community directly, knocked out power to a large area. That impact did include our community and surrounding area.

When it first went out in the evening, we expected it back on quickly, as usually happens.

Not this time.

It was off all night, the next morning, and through the next day as we wondered when it would be restored.

It was an eye-opening experience.

No power meant no access to the Internet, so no surfing, checking emails, looking in on social media. We do have data on a cell phone but wanted to save its power for a possible emergency.

We couldn’t watch TV, which wasn’t a big deal during a summer day, but we couldn’t even put on music.

We kept thinking of work we could be doing: trim the hedges – nope, need to plug in the trimmer; wash the vehicles – nope, need to plug in the pressure washer; couldn’t vacuum (thank goodness) and couldn’t use the stove.

I weeded the garden, made lunch of a garden salad and canned tuna so we wouldn’t have to open the fridge, then we went golfing. Why not? There was no beer cart but we survived.

The power finally came on after 22 hours. In the end, our biggest concern was losing the food in our freezer, which thankfully was fine. The local grocery store, on the other hand, lost everything.

But the experience was revealing in that we are extremely reliant on power. We take it for granted. And the house was extremely quiet without all the hum from electric appliances like the fridge, air conditioner, and of course the sound of the TV or music playing.

It was actually a peaceful, relaxing day, and thankfully everything turned out fine for us. We are fortunate to live where we can take a light switch for granted. Many in the world are not as lucky.