Power failure. A powerful reminder..

One evening last week, I was sitting in my Lazyboy and the lights went out. Pitch darkness for a few seconds. Pin drop silence. And then it happened.

One eye disconnected from Netflix. The other from instagram. A finger unplugged from WhatsApp and another from email, the pinkie finger pulled out of Twitter, and my thumb unlinked from LinkedIn.

Email. Social media. Television. And so many other things that were clawing for my attention went dark. In that split second I felt an intense relief. It was like I had been unplugged. I could not see anything. The sound of raindrops on the window pane took a hold of my senses. I had not realised there were gusts of wind blowing. It was as if I had been transported into a parallel universe. A real one. One that was not pulling me in a hundred different directions. Just me in my comfortable chair with my doggie at my feet and my wife nearby. In the moment. For just a few moments. 

That’s when I felt it. The joy of being unplugged. Intellectually I understand the need to disconnect, but to feel it like a surge of current hitting me, just when the electricity went out was truly a powerful reminder of how hard it is to shake free.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being connected too. I know that we are social beings. Enjoy the interaction. Love belonging to a tribe. Communicating. Sharing. Storytelling. I just wish our bodies and minds had a built in circuit breaker that helped us to switch off  automatically. We need to be charged. But like the instruction manual on most gadgets says don’t overcharge. It reduces battery life and heats up the device. 

Our bodies and brains it seems are the same. Always connected. Overheating. Reducing efficiency. This is because our attention is so fragmented. Not a new thought I know. But one brought home to me in a very real way a few nights ago when the lights went out. It was like I lit up. I was at home. Really at home. 

A hand on lovely little cookies head. A few wet licks. A conversation in the dark with my lovely wife. Son bursts into the room saying what happened to the lights. I felt like telling him they have finally come on.

And in that instant the generator kicks in, we are thrust back into artificial illumination. Plugged in again. Whisked off to various parts of the world. Back onto the carousel of connectedness. The connected claws are out again and they have each one of us in their grip. Anywhere but right here. Anywhere but right now.

When the power went out, it was as if my world turned upside-down, a weight lifted.

The claws let go for a few seconds. I felt myself go free of this multi headed hydra of bright lights that were dazzling and blinding me at the same time.

The embrace of darkness helped me see the light.

I can’t seem to find the instruction manual that will help me find the switch to disconnect at will.

Too much of anything becomes a bad thing and that’s where we have lost the plot. We are so connected, with so many people. Always switched on. We are wired for detonation. The newer batteries come with an internal circuit which prevents overcharging, or so I’m told. It’s time we humans got rewired too.

A few minutes of awareness. Of here-ness. A phrase I can upon a few days ago seems to resonate. ‘Indistractability’. I got a few minutes of accidental ‘Indistractability’. The question that begs an answer? How can I consciously unplug. So that I don’t get distracted. So that I stay in the now ?

I am in search of circuit breakers, that will help me stay better connected. Would love to hear what works for each of you…