Power Reflection

This morning/afternoon, our power went out.  It turns out the entire west side grid of Monroe county went out.  Oopsy doodles, Mr. Power Company.  Happily, the power returned just as our sump pump was reaching critical bail-out levels.  My work computer even came back up with no issues.  Oh, happy day.

This got me thinking about power.  Yup, power.  All kinds of power.  We rely on power to run our lives, but I think we lose sight of the power we have ourselves.  The lights went out, no television, no computer, no Wii, and the kids said "cool!" and went upstairs where there are windows to light their rooms, and played.  You would think it was a holiday.

Abigail and I sat in her room, playing with her lego table.  It has dinosaurs, and Winnie the Pooh, and trees, and trains, and clowns, and all kinds of fun things mixed all together from the lego sets we've purchased over the years.  The other 3 poked their heads in to ask "can we come in?".  Sure!  Before long, I had to move out of the room because I had all 4 kids in the smallest bedroom, laughing and having a blast because the power went down.  Who knew that Winnie the Pooh loves riding a dinosaur?

Now, the strange thing is, it made me think that the power really went up. The kids were animated and active and playful and creative and we were all having a blast together.  David called on my cell phone to let me know the power should be back up soon.  Bummer.

We all have the power to create what we live.  We can create stress, we can give our power away to others by letting them tromp all over us, we can make a relatively small debate into a huge production, we can decide to see beauty instead of focusing on the negatives around us.  We forget that, I think.  We forget to think positively, act compassionately, and respect ourselves for the power we really have.  It seems to get lost in every day life.  Appointments, kids, activities, doctor visits, work to be done... it never ends because that's our life... but... I'm going to try and remember to exert my own power more often to make a more positive life experience; not just for me, but for my spouse and my kids, to.

I find myself looking forward to the next power outage ;)