Unplugged

Excerpt from my diary after hurrican Maria.

"It is September 29, 2017.

Nine days have passed since hurricane Maria, category four, hit our little enchanting island of Puerto Rico.
As strange is it sounds, I have felt absence of fear all this time. Before, while preparing for it, and during its 17 hours of howling winds. I feel stable, quiet and patient, the qualities not so specific for my character..

More or less, island is paralyzed. Electrical system has completely collapsed, with prospect of electricity not returning for quite some time.  Businesess are slowly opening, closing time being 4pm as curfew is in place.

Total darkness comes upon us at around 7pm every day.
We all talk about “things getting back to normal” at some point. “When things normalize, I will do this and that…”

The time is passing slow. Darkness lasts for ever. And I wonder….what would happen if things don’t come back to “normal”.

What if route you took to work one day was not taking you from point A to point B? What if, when coming back from work you don’t find your home at the same place (this actually happened to many people after the hurricane)?  What if credit cards and banks don’t work anymore? What if electrical grid never recovers and we cannot “plug in”?

What if we stayed unplugged for ever?

When we think of making changes in life, we usually stay inside of a known form. We are afraid of the unknown inside of a well established grid. Changing life and habits from A to B  or C and D, Z or F inside the same grid, brings up the tremendous fear of the unknown. Changing place where we live, changing jobs, partners…I wonder if those are reall changes as we keep staying in the very same field, moving to different corners inside of the same shape. This is all created and conditioned by certain belief systems of how life should be and what we think will make us happy.
Good moment to remember: it is not purpose, it is not happiness we are looking for. It is a sense of alivness. When we feel alive, we have purpose and fullfilment.

But what happens if we end up  outside of a grid? What if the changes we need to make, or sometimes are forced to make, are outside of the gravity of the known shape, known values and rutines?

In that darkness, as we are now collectively experiencing here in Puerto Rico,  we can do two things:

• desperately try to come close to the grid and try to enter the  routine, a “normality”, and shapes of everyday life, while relaxing  neuron pathways on the well known roads,( and if that doesn’t work pack suitcase and go to the place with well established grid)  or
• sit in the darkness, feeling lost, tolerating weightless state with no gravity pulling us in any possible direction.

I choose the latter option.

Maybe because the first, known option, does not work at this time. It just dissolved. The well established identities vanished, they are useless in the new reality surronding us. In a few words, the system fell a part. And out of the system, time has no meaning.

Some people can’t stand it. The convienience rules the life of the modern human. If there is no convenience, I am out of here. And many people have left. Some of them, never to return to live here again. Some will be back.
But nothing will be the same. I have a hard time expressing in  words about what is really going on here after such massive distruction. The forces of nature are bigger then all of the lives of the humans on this Earth…and we think we are controlers…funny.

I go back to timeless and weightless darkness inside of me. I keep falling like the austronaut in the endless cosms. I think to myself that this must be similar to the existance of the soul outside of the physical body and constrains of  time and space. I keep falling and there is a peace in it.

Tolerating unplugged self seems to be scary for many people. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. I have learned that poeple fear self the most. We get scared that out of the grid we have no value, no profession, no occupation, no power.

I have also learned that this is the exact place the real indentity and  power begin."

Katarina