Boston isn't the typical place for hurricanes. Blizzards are our thing. So when we are told a hurricane is coming, its a big deal. The media, in true media fashion, of course hyped it up. Coverage was almost always on 72 hours leading up to the storm, and the entire duration of the storm. Of course, once it got to us, it was "only" a tropical storm, but alas, the hype continued with video footage of waves crashing along the shore line, down trees, strong wind.
At least where I live, we didn't see much destruction. A few tree branches fell in my neighborhood, and driving around after the storm it looked sort of different, lots of debris and leaves and branches all around. A few trees uprooted. Though there may have been worse damage that I didn't see first hand, the storm wasn't what it was projected to be all week (go figure, the media exaggerated something?!). The one thing that seemed to be the ULTIMATE end of the world though, was that many many people lost power.
Now, I was sort of kind of hoping to lose power. I don't really like how much technology there is today. I'm one to turn my nose up at iPhones or any phone with internet. I'd rather play games with my family than sit on the couch flipping through the channels. But of course, my house didn't lose power. We watched movies all day, played games on my brother's smart phone, read my kindle. Our day was filled with entertainment from everything electronic.
And then, I checked facebook (of course, because after all that... I'm a hypocrite). Statuses were filled with "OMG I BETTER BE ABLE TO WATCH THE VMAs AND JERSEY SHORE!" and how bored every one was. After reading all of this, I started thinking about what it means to not take life for granted. Hurricanes have destroyed many people's lives down south (hello katrina?). A tree fell on your car? Your pool? Their entire house was swept away in a flood. Some lost their whole families. Last I heard, 10 people died from this one, not to mention the grief of their family members and people who knew them. And people are complaining about a little power loss? Last I knew, people lived for hundreds of years without power. What did they do?
I was (somewhat) happy when I moved into school to find the power was still out. While we had generator power for a couple hours, it eventually shut off. I moved my stuff in a dimly lit room, went and visited friends without the distraction of facebook, loud music, and in some cases, cell phones as they all started to die. I was sort of excited. Then I thought about my medicine that wasn't staying cold in my fridge, how would I do my treatments tomorrow? I'm dependent on electricity just like every one else.
And then, the lights flickered on. The silence we began to notice got louder as fans and refrigerators turned on. Everyone desperately tried the internet, charged their phones, and life was restored to normalcy. I was sort of disappointed, I liked "roughing it" without the power. But, at the same time I was relieved. I could do my treatments the next day. My meds could stay cold. The storm was over.
But one thing I learned from all this was to appreciate what you have. I am so lucky to have all of these machines to keep me healthy. Plugging my vest or nebulizer into a wall has never been so meaningful. Being able to keep in touch with friends over the internet (especially the ones who will be in other countries this year) is such an amazing thing. And I feel blessed that, other than a few lost tree limbs, all the houses in my neighborhood are in tact. I would have never wished the hurricane to be more destructive than it was, though some were disappointed that there wasn't much excitement. We are lucky here in Boston that it wasn't any bigger.
Hopefully, if any thing came out of this, people learned to appreciate their lives of technology, not to abuse it for meaningless things, to take a moment to have a face to face conversation with their family members with no distraction rather than looking at their phones, their computers, etc (and I'm guilty of this too), and to remember that when we complain about those little inconveniences, there are people struggling out there who always have it worse off than we do.
