Dearest Readers,
Yesterday afternoon, while I was working away on the to-do list, our fair city experienced a power outage. The laptop sitting before me, the conduit for all of my business, made an ominous sounding “zzzt” and the screen went suddenly black. I found myself staring dumbfounded at a dead machine.
RIP iBook G4.
Yes, the little technical wizard that has been my constant and faithful companion for the last four years is now totally kaput. Burnt. Fried. Deader than a doornail.
I’m surprisingly calm about it. This probably has to do with the fact that I backed everything up on an external hard drive just two weeks ago. Still, there is two weeks of work on there that may or may not be retrievable. But I’m still here, folks. We do survive the loss of things.
A few years ago I saw an interview with the great writer Toni Morrison, who wrote one of my favourite books of all time, Song of Solomon, and she was talking about a house fire which had destroyed all of her unpublished and yet-to-be-published work. She was obviously devastated by the ordeal but also resigned to her new reality.
“I have to let it go,” she said. There was nothing she could do.
There is nothing I can do either. I may have lost almost 20 pages of a new play. Toni Morrison lost novels. I’m not comparing pain merely putting things into perspective.
I can’t help thinking of what my reaction might have been a few short years ago. Rage. I might have damaged something. Today I feel no anger. I almost feel relief! I cannot access any of the files currently vying for my attention and so I’m being forced to let go absolutely of certain tasks. I am getting a much needed break.
Perhaps that power outage was made just for me.
Inspiring Message of the Day: Today I will accept the things I cannot change. I will remember that my possessions do not make or break me. I will enjoy the freedom that comes from letting go.
