Oh, the lights are out! Do you want to be happy?

Hey friends, today I have a lovely guest on my blog. It was an interesting incident that while browsing my Twitter profile, I came across Leha’s tweet. She talked about things we can do when there is no electricity. It instantly struck me and thus I invited her to my blog. Oh! the lights are out! Do you want to be happy? Read on this beautiful piece where she talks about little things in life that can make us happy even when there is no electricity.

Oh…the lights are out!

“The tale of the seven sisters…No, no tell us the one where the old woman cried tears that turned into pearls…” I and my sister curled up at Grandma and Grandpa’s feet as they told us horror stories in the light of a candle balanced on its tarnished brass stand. This is how we spent evenings and nights when there was a power cut. We never got tired of hearing the same stories over and over.  Our grandparent’s eyes grew big with every sentence and the gestures of their hands creating spooky shadows on the wall made our evenings so wonderful that we would actually frown when the power came back on.

Fast forward 15 years

The digital age where there is so much to do, so much information around us. What do I do when there is no electricity? First of all, I panic. I rush to find my power bank and keep it handy, and then I turn my phone on power-saving mode. My laptop stays switched off unless I really need it because the battery empties as an open Lays packet would around hungry 6-year-olds (or ‘old’ depending on the kid’s appetite for chips). All this happens in a jiffy and then I think of what I should do.  That plant by the window could use some watering; maybe my wardrobe needs some rearranging? I haven’t used that T-shirt in a while; perhaps I could give it away. Let’s see what I can find in that huge stack of old photo albums.  

The speckles on those tiles look really pretty, maybe I should count them.  Hey, what an annoying housefly buzzing around my ears. Ohh, look at its feet, so tiny. When will the power be back? It seems like a tourist gone to the Bermuda Triangle. Is that mystery solved yet? I should Google it. Oh wait, there’s no Wi-Fi…

The light is back

Eventually, the power is back on and I know it by the soothing green light my Wi-Fi router emits and the whirring of the ceiling fan I have grown so accustomed to. My phone and laptop start notifying me of things I need to get back to and, thus I am sucked back into my digital life.

This passage can be funny and a harsh reality at the same time. How ‘friendly’ have we gotten with the new world that it has made us forget the simple joys we had as kids? There used to be days when we needed nothing external to make us happy or ‘entertain’ us. Now, we are everything but free!

Why wait for a power cut to enjoy life the way it is? With the pace we live our life at, we may not be able to, or rather we shouldn’t let go of the comfort modernism has brought us, but we can at the most live a life that is run by you and not your surroundings, a conscious life, a life in which you are entirely present at this very moment.

Know my guest

Leha is a freelance editor and an active Blogchatter team member. She likes to read, paint and analyse books more than reviewing them. You can find her active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.