Learning to Appreciate

So many things in my daily life I take for granted and I don’t even wonder how they got there: people, conveniences and dust-bunnies. One of the most significant conveniences in our lives and the history of mankind is electricity. There is so much we cannot do without electricity and life would be a great hardship without it.

Rarely do we take note of electricity until it goes out in a storm or brown-out. Worse yet, as if from the deep blue ether of the cosmos, a flicker of the precious juice comes, snuffs out a file not yet saved, sends a bit too much to a power supply and overwhelms the machine that runs our lives or resets all of our digital clocks to 12:00am! Our world is turned upside down for what seems like eons or at least invaluable minutes of time. The computer is down; the server is down; we are down!

When at work, being “down” means idleness, unproductive time, isolation and worse, time to file the stacks on my desk. But then there are people out of their offices, talking in the hall, taking time to communicate face-to-face instead of by email. How wonderful! How novel! What is this new approach to social media?

At home, the TV is off, laptops may operate for a short while, and if it is past sundown, how to I find the flashlight or candles in the dark? I can’t get any chores completed and dinner will be cold, unless my husband remembered to get the gas tank on the grill refilled. Then with the darkness, some quiet comes. I can hear my cats purring across the room.

Even a minor blip in electricity delivery can be very inconvenient, but I’ve learned to appreciate the break. I see people’s faces, get some filing done and realize what I take for granted.

Anyone got a deck of cards in case the electricity goes out?