Yesterday, I was happily teaching a class online with my 28-year-old son, when suddenly all went dark and the fans stopped running. Soon, we realized that the cellular service was also spotty. Hmmm. The class was obviously over.
Once we realized that it wasn’t just my place - that it was actually a county-wide outage, we both got these funny smiles on our faces. The power is out. Cell service is questionable. Is there something interesting going on?
There’s something apocalyptically intriguing for me when the power goes out. First of all, I use the word apocalypse, not in an “end of the world” sense, but in the sense of “the end of the old world”, a time of light-bringing. We’ve lived in a very strange world controlled by “them” for millennia. So, when suddenly something big shifts, there is a low-level excitement that things might actually be changing.
Electrical power literally plugs us into the grid, the matrix, the system of “the man”. It’s fascinating how our lives have become moulded around the use of electricity. TV, computers, iPads, phone apps, social media, etc. all draw our attention for the majority of our waking hours.
If the power is gone, we are no longer distracted. We are no longer numbing out. We are no longer hyper-stimulated by others.
We have a chance to just be ourselves. Do we remember who we are without the energy grid? Do we remember what our mind, body, and soul love to do?
What do you want to do?
My son and I sat down to ponder the day. It was 11:00 in the morning. A whole day was ahead of us.
I asked him, “So, what would you like to do with your day now that the power is out?”
He said, “I don’t know. Read. Walk. Nap.”
I started playing with ideas of creating exercise workouts for when there is no power - no music, timers, or video classes. Just me. Counting. Breathing. In my body.
I thought of the joys of lying on the couch reading uninterrupted. I thought of going for a long walk around town to see who was out and about. I thought about doing some yoga and meditating. All pretty chill.
I started to realize how different it was to think about what we would love to do in the absence of electricity. To even think about it felt like coming home in a sense - coming home to our soul. To choose what to do based on what I wanted to do inside - not based on external stimulation.
Generational Challenges
I realized what an interesting challenge this thought process was. So much of our lives are wrapped up in or dependent on an electronic device. What do we love to do beyond that?
Luckily for me, I love to read and don’t do it enough. So, that’s an easy joy to fall into. And theoretically, this whole question should be less of a challenge for my generation and older (I’m 53) because, for most of our lives, we weren’t so wrapped around computers and iPads. However, in truth, we were definitely TV kids in the 70s and 80s. We didn’t miss a single show if we could help it… and those shows were on every day after school.
When I think of younger generations, I might assume that it is even harder because they were raised with phones and tablets in their hands. I’m curious to know if these children, when faced with a power outage, still are able to just “go outside and play”.
Remembering our Soul
The beautiful thing about losing power is that we become free of the programming in the computers, phones, apps, Netflix, etc and we get to focus within.
We can look back to our childhood and ask, “What did I love to do then?” We can look around our community and wonder what possibilities are out there. We can go hiking, head to the lake, lay on the grass and just think about nothing.
Imagine. Thinking about nothing. No external stimulus. Just our soul… lying on the grass. Pure heaven.
What do YOU like to do without electricity? What does your soul love?