During one of my lovely long excursions to the River this past month, we had a number of thunderstorms, one of which knocked the power out. At first, I was extremely excited, because I love storms and watching the lightning blaze patterns into the rural sky. However, I then discovered that without electricity, out water pump didn't work, and therefore I couldn't take a shower. This became quite an issue, because I had just learned how to wakeboard that day, and my hair was all knotty and saturated with river water. I also couldn't open the fridge to get something to drink after an exhausting day of near dehydration, because we had no idea when the power would be back on, and we didn't want to let all of the cold air out. Finally, Bubbles the Nerdfighting (almost) iPod (aka my crappy Sansa mp3 player) was dead, and I couldn't waste my flashlight batteries to read and distract myself from my grimy thirstiness and sore muscles. Honestly, the electricity could not have picked a worse time to stop working.
Oh, and did I mention, it was SUPER HOT that day, which quickly became awful without air conditioning?
As I was laying on my floor, pretending I was cool, clean, and hydrated, it struck me how ridiculous my situation was. People survived for hundreds of years before me without electricity, and they were able to make do! The Amish voluntarily go without it, even today, and they are totally fine! And yet, I was struggling to make it through one measly night.
I also realized that having our modern world rely on something so easily damaged or lost is a rather stupid idea. Why are we so reliant on electricity, and so helpless when it is taken away? Why don't we have some form of back-up, besides environment-harming generators that run on gasoline? Wind-energy? Hydro-electric power? Anything?
Once the power flickered back to life around the middle of the next day, I was quite frazzled and running out of coping ideas. I immediately took a shower, turned on my fan, laid under the air-vent, turned on my light, and read a book. I definitely appreciated electricity more after having to survive without it for 15 hours.
The same thing happened after our water pump burst in the garage. There were several times I tried to turn on the sink out of habit, and nothing came out of the faucet, which was both depressing and irritating. I never really realized how many times a day I used running water until I had to try and cope without it. And once again, I appreciated it more once it came back on.
I feel like the same thing will happen to all of us once summer jerks to a halt and we are all thrown back into the harsh school schedule. We may feel bored now, and we may miss our friends, but we have a certain blissful freedom now that you just don't have during the school year. And we don't take advantage of it after about the first week of summer, because we forget to appreciate not being stuck in a bland cinderblock room all the time. All of these occurrences make me wonder, why don't we appreciate things all the time, instead of only after we've lost them? This is my new goal. Don't take things for granted, and take advantage of the time and opportunities I have.
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