Power outages thrill me. They always have.
I love candles. And I didn’t have raw meat in the refrigerator on Sunday night when the lights went out. So my enthusiasm for outages persisted that night, so much so that I found myself secretly hoping the lights would stay off for days even as I checked with my housemates for updates on when power might return.
One pleasure of an outage is the stillness. When the electricity failed, all of the background noise in the house stopped. Gone were the sounds at the edges of ordinary consciousness: the low hum of the refrigerator, the whoosh of the hallway fan, the buzz of overhead lights. It was quiet.
As dusk fell, we went from doing homework by the windows to congregating like talkative moths around candlelight in the living room and kitchen. We felt our way around the house, unable to rely even on far-off streetlight leaking through the windows.
In lieu of the sights and sounds of a normal evening, I found myself attentive to things I often miss and reminded of the breathless distractedness of the everyday world.
As I settled in my room with a trio of tealights and class reading, I was sad my computer and phone weren’t dying faster. The persistent, instantaneous availability of text messages, emails, and tweets disrupted the sacredness of the moment. Unlike with the microwave or toaster, if I wanted to put those options away, it required my own dreadfully faulty free will.
Even so, those five precious hours taught me again the romance of silent attention.
The quality of life even the poorest Hillsdale students enjoy would dazzle their great-grandparents, and even some of their grandparents. The conveniences 21st-century Americans are accustomed to — electricity, modern plumbing, and the world wide web, to name just a few — are blessings. These tools have saved, enhanced, and expanded lives.
Yet a life of immense convenience so easily becomes one of distraction, dissatisfaction, and aridity. We lose the ability to pay attention and thus the ability to love. Love and attention are, after all, somewhat synonymous: Watch student artists or musicians at their craft, then observe a freshman busy flirting with his crush in AJs. The connection is apparent: Any relationship or pursuit worth sustaining demands a sacrifice of focused time and unflinching sight.
If to love is to pay attention, then what we lose in a world of distraction is the ability to love.
Very often our grandparents’ love stories begin with, “I first noticed him or her when…” One crucial moment of attention became the wellspring of generations of offspring. Many Hillsdale students owe their existence to that first glance across the classroom, dance hall, or bar. Their forebears didn’t have their faces locked onto screens.
Our grandparents were lucky to grow up in a less distracted world. Though we may be tempted to throw our hands up and surrender to the whims of the algorithm overlords, despair cannot be the solution. Our capacity for attention is neither fixed nor irreversibly damaged — something I learned in my art classes here. Rather, it expands rapidly with time and effort, which I experienced so keenly on Sunday.
Whether or not one observes the meditative liturgies of Lent, this spring is a perfect time to reclaim one’s attention, and thus one’s love, as the world blossoms anew. Register for an art class or music lessons, for a challenging lab or a sport. Go on a walk — alone and without earbuds. Linger in a conversation, and don’t check your phone. Notice the pretty girl in your class — and maybe even say hello.
Caroline Kurt is a junior studying English.
