When The Lights Go Out
When The Lights Go Out
So, the power went out Saturday night July 13th, about 11:11PM. The computer went dark, the fans and air conditioning quit, and things got very quiet.
I fumbled around trying to feel for the small flashlight I keep next to the computer, and couldn’t find it right away. The lights hadn’t come back on yet, so I decided to get up and walk across the room to where I know I have another flashlight by the front door, that I concluded should be much easier to find. Besides, I know the house pretty good, I should be able to get there no problem, even in the dark.
Wrong.
Darkness is so disorienting, that you think you are one place, when actually you are somewhere totally different. So you try stuff that should work if you were where you thought you were, but it doesn’t work, because that’s not where you actually are. And so, you end up hurting yourself and wrecking the environment around you. Sound familiar, anyone?
Eventually, I made it outside to look around and to listen to the police sirens. My first thought, when the power went down, was that some drunk probably drove a car into a utility pole and killed themselves, again, because that’s usually been the case whenever the power suddenly cuts out like this. The police sirens gave sad testimony that, probably, that was what happened this time too.
All the neighbors on my side of the street were out in their front yards taking comfort that they were not the only ones in darkness. . .“I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.” They said.
But the people across the street still had power. Their lights were still on. Do you think we were all happy for them, and wishing them the best? I don’t think so. Misery loves company. It was sort of like seeing a happy Jesus freak trotting down the sidewalk toward me. Annoying, that’s what it was! I had to accept, that not far away, things were better and brighter for somebody else, and that I was in an inferior state of disrepair. It totally sucked! I didn’t like it at all.
So I decided to quit looking at the light across the street, and go back in the house and embrace my own darkness. Yep. And I waited. And it got hotter, and hotter. I got more and more uncomfortable. I had a cool drink, so that helped. But I started sweating anyway. I had to stay out of the fridge, so it would stay cool longer, because I had no idea when the darkness might end, and the power be restored.
See, when you are in darkness, you really change how you live. You don’t do as much, and you mostly just lay around obsessing about enlightenment, and how can I improve my situation? I didn’t care about anyone else’s’ situation, just mine, because mine wasn’t very good.
Even though you can’t see your faults in the dark, it is still very hard to love yourself, when you are feeling lost and miserable.
When am I going to ascend? When are they going to turn the lights on? That’s all I could think about. And that got pretty boring, so I began to fall asleep.
Then there was a sudden abrupt change. My whole environment came to life. The lights snapped back on, the fans began turning, and it was like I had suddenly ascended into a new dimension of light and power.
That’s how it is with light, you shine light into the darkness, and it is a sudden and abrupt change. You know something is radically different, because it is. The darkness leaves instantly. It doesn’t just slowly trickle down a drain into the floor.
Sure, I had rooms in my house that were still dark, but that’s because I had the doors to those rooms closed.
