I’ve noticed that everyone seems to be in a good mood with high spirits at work lately. Was it because a snowflake showed its crystalline face for the first time this fall, or have we slipped into winter already? Was it perhaps the notion of turning on a furnace for the first time just to feel some warm air blowing around the house? Was it perhaps because the sun and the moon were just spectacular? Whatever the reason, it just felt good.
Then the power shut off and we all groaned: Why? Why? Why? The last bit of information I had just entered into my computer, lost. The email that I thought I had sent, lost in a server somewhere. The printed volumes of spreadsheets, lost. The communication network, lost. All the warmth from the heaters and furnaces, lost.
We stepped outside onto the now frozen grounds and wondered if this was a community wide problem, before noticing that some buildings had their emergency backup lights on. Just then, the skies pelted us with ice, which bounced off my Gore-Tex-covered jacket. Finally, after several attempts by the power ranger guys, the electricity came back on. Aaahhh, light and power just in time for supper. I finally finished that slow-cooked piece of meat and boiled some potatoes, before heading to bed. At least under the sheets everything was warm and cozy.
The following morning, a certain nippiness in the air made the children bundle up in warm clothes just to arrive at school in time for another blackout. At work my colleagues wondered whether to pack up and head home to rustle up something cold to eat for lunch. But lo and behold, the power came back on just before lunch!
A miracle or just another planned outage scheduled to fit the needs of the masses? Who knows? This incident slipped away from our memories as just another way life gets messed up. For the newcomers in the community, it’s something to write home about as email is replaced by snail mail. I was actually printing stuff and delivering it in person for a few hours, which allowed me to burn off a few calories in the process.
In fact, this column was lost in the hubris and confusion as everything was resetting and everything that wasn’t saved was lost. Thank God for inventing the human brain as it still works the way it’s supposed to, just not as efficiently and quickly as the supercomputer on my desk. Thinking about it today, I should just use laptops as they have batteries which only die from neglect.
So as real life unfolds in its natural way, I see glimpses of family coming out from the veil of the internet and the children resorting to pencils and crayons on actual paper. My grandson, after realizing that the VR doesn’t work, discovers that there are other boys in the neighbourhood dealing with the same dilemma. I told him that the real world exists without electricity and that the real world was the one I played in when I was a child. Amazed, he listened to my stories of what we did to keep ourselves occupied. Wow, he exclaims, the 20th century was pretty cool.
I told him that we walked to school or anywhere else for that matter. How did you survive without a four-wheeler? I said back in the day, we used dog teams to get around and paddled canoes and used snowshoes. Wow, it was like I was talking about how the great pyramids were built and he wondered how we were able to use so much energy to get simple things done.
I think back too, about how the changes we are going through in society are affecting us and how convenience affects our ability to get things done without it. So much so that we are helpless without electricity or running water or anything modern.
Maybe, we are just like the rest of society now, tied to convenience and immediacy and other nasty habits that made our lives easier. I guess it’s time for some tough life to put everything back in perspective. Oh, and the power is now back on. Yay!