On Tuesday evening at my home, we experienced a storm front that packed 80+ mph winds that knocked down a number of tree limbs. It caused our electric power to go down for 31 hours. Here are three lessons that this storm:
- As adult citizens in the western world, we have become increasingly dependent on battery powered devices for communication and entertainment. Having to ration my use of the phone in mypockets, my iPads for reading, and computers for accessing email and Facebook was not easy. Last evening, we went to friends toting all of our devices to “borrow” electricity to charge up for the rest of the evening since we did not know when power would be restored.
- Teenagers are even more dependent on battery powered devices than adults. My child was finding it difficult last evening, especially since her phone and computer had been drained. We took her to Chipotle to grab something to eat last evening and she took her phone to get a bit of a charge for the rest of the evening. When she found out that my wife’s laptop had been charged at the neighbors and that I had Internet access via 3G on my CR-48 Chromebook, she asked to borrow those devices to watch a DVD and communicate with her friends so that “she would not be bored”. The teenager’s laptop has replaced the 13″ black and white TV and the stereo system complete with 8 track tape player that was in my bedroom as a teenager.
- Electronic devices may be throwing our natural body cycles off. When it got really dark at 9:30 p.m., I began to want to go to sleep. And the past two mornings, when it started to get lighter, my body wanted to begin waking. Contrast this to a normal day, when I would be planted in front of a glowing screen for at least another hour and a half, reading, communicating, or working. Maybe this is why for many of us, our bodies are in a constant state of exhaustion. We are working against the natural cycles and rhythms of our bodies. I look forward to what the ISTE keynote speaker John Medina may say on this subject. But I found it interesting.
The good news is that after 32 hours, our power came on at 4:00 a.m. this morning. It awakened me with a start, as my daughter left our overhead bedroom light on. And it got me to thinking…