Day 100

Worst birthday ever.

Well, maybe not "ever," I'm sure someone somewhere must have once had a worse birthday, but yesterday was the worst birthday ever for me.

Friday, for no apparent reason (no wind or rain), a tree fell over across Collier Road, blocking morning rush hour traffic and taking down power lines.  I was without electricity Friday from 5 a.m. to noon, and without cable or internet until 4 p.m.

The next day, Saturday (yesterday), was my birthday, and I planned on spending the day quietly, watching some Netflix movies, streaming some music, and playing video games.  In other words, no different than most every other day since the pandemic hit these shores.

Mother Nature had other ideas.  A thunderstorm rumbled through a little after 2 p.m. with surprisingly violent wind gusts and downpour, and knocked several branches off trees in my yard. Worse, it knocked over several trees in the area, including one that took out a major transmission line along Northside Drive and one that fell across Evergreen Road a block from me (above).

Power went out at 2:15 and didn't come back again until nearly 7:00.  No Netflix, no television, no electric lights, no cable, no Spotify, no 21st Century civilization.

When you live alone, nothing makes you confront your solitude more than a loss of power.  All you can do is just sit there quietly and wait for someone to do something somewhere so that the power will return. I had to resist the urge to play with my iPhone because the battery was already low and I wasn't sure how for how long I had to preserve the charge.  It was overcast and dark outside, and hard to read a book or magazine in my shady home even when sitting next to a window (but I did strain my eyes reading by dim light for an hour or two anyway).  I went outside for a walk and to survey the storm damage, but the weather was so hot and muggy that walking around quickly got sticky and uncomfortable.  

In years past, when I lost power, I'd just pack up my laptop and head to Starbucks for an hour or two, or else get dinner and a few beers while killing time at a sports bar.  But in these socially distant pandemic times, that's no longer an option.  I was wondering how and what I was going to do about dinner when the light and power suddenly returned. 

Two lessons here.  The first is how we use electronics and the distractions of modernity to avoid facing the existential emptiness at the center of our lives.

Second lesson is how, once the lights did come back on, along with cable television and the internet, all that existential dread suddenly vanished.  Nothing lasts forever, even though some things feel that way at times.  

I've experienced the same thing during some long meditation retreats.  While you're sitting there, the mind rebelling against the quiet and stillness, the legs and knees sore from sitting cross-legged for so many hours, and the butt feeling compressed beneath the awful gravity of the weight of the body, it seems like the agony is lasting forever.  But then the bell rings and you get up, and the mind is suddenly relieved, the blood flows back to the legs, and the weight is off your ass, and you realize  in that moment that the past, even the agonizing past of just a minute ago, is just a memory in the mind, no more real than pictures in a book.  Everything is impermanent and nothing lasts forever. Why be upset sitting home alone in the gloom of a stormy afternoon, when inevitably the lights will eventually come back on and the misery you're experiencing will vanish?

Two lessons yesterday, but frankly, I didn't really want to spend my birthday getting schooled on the addictions of distraction and the impermanence of suffering.  

I had wanted to wallow in those distracting addictions and the delusion of permanence.

Worst birthday ever and now it's over.