The other night I couldn’t sleep. I kept bouncing between apps—social media, the news, random videos—without really knowing what I was looking for. At some point I stopped and thought: when did silence become so hard?
That’s when I remembered nights from my childhood, when silence wasn’t a problem at all. In fact, it was the best part.
When the electricity went out, the world shifted.
The fans fell silent. The TV blinked off.
Even the street outside went quiet.
For kids like me, it wasn’t a problem.
It was an invitation.
We’d spill out of our rooms, gathering on the verandah or in the courtyard or on the roof. No homework to finish, no screens to distract us—the night suddenly belonged to us.
Sometimes we told stories—half-remembered myths, ghost tales, or things we simply made up on the spot. Other times we played clapping games in the dark or laughed at nothing at all.
The darkness never felt scary. It felt alive. The shadows carried our voices. The sky felt bigger. And when the lights finally flickered back, we almost wished they hadn’t.
A power cut back then wasn’t just an outage.
It was freedom.
No screens. No interruptions.
Just people, together.
Now we live in a world of constant electricity, glowing Wi-Fi routers, and screens in every corner.
Convenience is everywhere. And yet—something’s missing.
Because connection isn’t built on signal strength.
It’s built in pauses. In shared silences. In nights when nothing works except being together.
Maybe that’s what I miss. Not the outage, but the pause.
The chance to stop, to notice each other, to let the night be enough.
And maybe every now and then, we need to create those little blackouts for ourselves—before the world forces one on us.
