Before the Power Goes Out

I love electricity.

I appreciate it every single day. Electricity powers my life so quietly and efficiently that it can be easy to forget it's there. It's one of those things I simply take for granted—until it's gone.

Suddenly, I can't make my coffee. My shower is cold. My refrigerator is warm. I need to find my flashlight. I can't access my computer. My world is radically altered for a few hours. I find myself wondering, what would life be like if the power never came back on?

And I wait. I wait for the lights to flicker. I wait for the familiar hum of the refrigerator. I wait for life to return to normal.

When it does, I'm profoundly grateful and relieved--for a while.

For a while, I am aware of the electricity every time I flip a switch.

Electricity keeps my food cold and my coffee hot. It makes my house comfortable when the Arizona sun is blistering my patio. It gives me light when I can't see. It powers my computer so I can work, my television so I can unwind, and my digital picture frame so I can be reminded of people I love, places I've been, and moments I never want to forget. I love to learn, and thanks to electricity, I can satisfy my curiosity in seconds.

Eventually, life returns to normal. But so does my tendency to take electricity for granted.

I start to see the cords.

They're rarely attractive. Sometimes they're too long. Sometimes they aren't long enough. They disappear behind furniture, collect dust, and somehow manage to tangle themselves into impossible knots.

Sometimes the one I need is nowhere to be found. That's usually my fault because I've neglected to care for it properly. (Translation: I forgot where I put it.)

Sometimes a cord simply stops working, and everything connected to it grinds to a halt.

Sometimes a cord leads to an appliance or device that no longer serves me, and it’s just time to cut the cord (pun intended).

The cords get walked on, tripped over, and cursed at. Yet they quietly continue doing what they've always done—connecting, carrying, serving.

The cords, while sometimes messy and not especially pretty, improve my life in countless ways every single day. They help nurture me, bathe me in light when I can’t see, keep me comfortable, entertain me, connect me with the people I love, and make my work possible.

They are the price of admission to an electric life.

I still wish my cords were neater.

But every so often, when I'm crawling behind my desk, trying to make sense of the cords so essential to my life, there’s something I can't help but notice…relationships are like that.

Perhaps the best time to appreciate what quietly supports my life isn’t after it’s gone.

It’s before the power goes out.