By Emily Stonehouse
There are few feelings greater than the euphoria of your hydro being restored.
It’s been a rough few days. For quite literally everyone in the county. Nearly everyone in the province.
It was a storm that we were anticipating. In this day and age, we can see the satellite images in pinks and purples and blues as they slide across our screens.
But I don’t think anyone was quite expecting this.
Cracked trees, flooded basements, closed roads, crashed phone lines.
A series of unfortunate events, all compiled together.
But when events like this occur, they serve as reminders for what we have. Those little things we take for granted oh so often. Light. Warmth. Connections.
We’re no strangers to power outages. Though they aren’t the most comfortable, we are lucky to have an abundance of flashlights and beeswax candles, and the kids lean into the cozy component.
The challenge was the cut in connections. It’s not something we’re used to, these days. We moan and groan about the constant inundation of contact, but in reality, it’s something we’re used to. The ability to pick up our phones and text or call anyone at whim.
But landlines had crashed as well. All phones cut.
It made me think about times in the past where there was this constant crave for connections. As I watched my kids huddle around the fire in a comfortable quiet, I thought about an era where this was the norm. There’s beauty in that simplicity, in that ease of life.
But the reality is that we are no longer in that time. We’ve run so far past that comfortable quiet that we are safer in the buzz of the bustle.
As we joined together as a team for the production of the Minden Times (no small feat considering the cut connections), while we navigated the logistics of pulling files and documents from clouds and servers, we discussed ‘the sounds of life’ and what we were missing.
The ping of cell phones. Running water. The click of the furnace humming to life.
We have it so easy, in our world. The little loss of these sounds of life has me thinking about other parts of the world, where many will never hear those comfortable cacophony.
We take so much for granted. Light. Warmth. Connections.
And I always kick myself that it takes a natural disaster; a split second of charged changes that lights our worlds on fire and reminds us how easy we have it. It happens so fast; everything crumbling with the snap of one wire.
We should appreciate these little things all the time. It feels like the moment our life clicks back online, we revert to the buzz of the bustle. That comfortable place where we land in limbo until the next disaster shocks our cores.
That euphoria of hydro being restored; a moment of gratitude we feel deep in our beings, for that split second. We should all be more mindful of that feeling.
And try to carry it forward in any way we can.
