In the last 2 weeks, our school power has gone out twice. Once the tech gurus managed to keep the internet humming (I have no idea – voodoo magic, I expect, was involved) but not today. It’s funny to be in a school full of kids on computers and have no way to get them online. My writing class found excuses not to write (surprise!) because they couldn’t link to stuff saved in cloudy regions.
I find it hilarious that we rely so much on technology to make our lives easier and then that tech (be it as simple as THE LIGHTS) goes away, and we kind of don’t know what to do with ourselves.
I think about this sort of thing kind of regularly – not so much the Power, but my dependence on it. Getting my car out of the garage for work in the morning, for instance. If the door doesn’t work, neither do I. My freezer full of food, for another instance. I know that on any busy day I could grab food of many varieties out of the freezer and produce a meal. But what if the freezer dies? (Not an entirely hypothetical question – last time that happened it was January, so the freezer acted like a cooler for a day or two because LUCK or BLESSINGS or COINCIDENCE, depending on your semantics.) Or what if the oven doesn’t work and I can’t cook Costco Orange Chicken? Or what if the power’s out and I can’t blend all those frozen fruits and veggies together? All my careful preparation is for naught, and here I am, stuck being the one who no longer ALWAYS HAS HOMEMADE BREAD in the pantry. So no dinner.
I have plenty of metaphorical powerlessness, too – when I depend on things (physical, mental, metaphysical) to work and they don’t and I’m left feeling all alone and drown-y and helpless and abandoned – and that right there is the thing. I always manage to take it personally. I feel like I’VE BEEN LEFT ALONE, which my brain knows is silly but my heart totally buys.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If I have ever been your Power, and I went away and left you Powerless and you were depending on me because I should always be there for you? I’m sorry about it. And please understand (as I’m coming to understand) it’s not very often a conscious choice, and it’s mostly true that I don’t even know it happened unless you tell me. But if you tell me, I’ll try to get you connected to your power again so you’re not feeling all abandoned. Because we hate that, right? (Right.)