What I like About Black Out

When I was a kid, when my grandparents were still around, we usually went over to their house for dinner. And after dinner my parents will watch the news with my grandparents. There were times we had blackouts in the evening, right before we had our dinner. We would light on those old oil lamp, and had our dinner under the dim yellow light. The dinner tasted the same, and the conversation were as warm as ever. What excites me about blackout back then was, because there was no electricity during the news hour, we had all the excuses to ask the adults to bring us to the playground opposite of my grandparents' house. I love the swing.

After my grandparents had passed away, we would have dinner in our own home. And when there were blackouts at night, we would light the candles, put at various location of the house, so that we still can move around the house if we needed to. Most of the time, we would all sit in the living room, and do something which doesn't need electricity - sharing about what has happened in school, work, talk about the cartoon we never tired watching, and everything else.

Don't you realise when we're supplied with electricity, we're always distracted from what is essentially the more important things in our life? Of course, watching news on TV, replying emails or studying are also important. We stay connected to the OUTSIDE world. But what about to the world around you? We have all the means to do more, and go beyond what used to be our limits. Yet, have we actually pay attention to what is right in front of us?

As the light goes off, everything comes to a halt. We look around, to see what is happening. We see darkness. But hey, what remain glowing is the love from the eyes of our close ones. Do they always glow so charmingly like the stars in the sky? My, shame on me that I never notice that. Not when David Cook's songs are played repeatedly in my SonicStage.

That is when we would go back to basics, go back to the time when we would scramble around for candles and lighters, and sit around in the living room, to spend undisturbed time with the ones who mean a lot to us, whose love have always been around yet neglected.

Today is the day, when we do not need to wait for TNB to switch off the power, but we take the initiative to turn off the distraction ourselves, and spend some quality time, enjoying the beauty of darkness with those who truly deserves our attention. It may not be so much of conserving energy or saving the Earth from more global warming (doesn't matter if it could or otherwise), because it's more to remembering the virtue of connection, not using the internet, that is.

Earth Hour, this is for you =)