The power outages resulting from the windstorms last week brought up many issues for many people. Some people were incensed, frustrated, and had a hard time understanding why it would take so long for the power to come back on. Others were upset because they couldn’t use the internet, their phones couldn’t be charged, or they couldn’t go to the gym. Indeed, I heard that one major complaint about the power outage was that some folks had to exercise outside because they couldn’t go to the gym. Power outages are, indeed, frustrating. I was out with my children and came home to a house without power. We worried that all of the groceries we had recently bought would spoil in our fridge, or that people wouldn’t be able to reach us in an emergency. That said, we’ve been through worse power outages in the past. For a year, we lived in North Carolina. One night, we awoke to the sound of creaking and cracking, and something heavy falling on the roof of our apartment building. It also felt unusually cold. We looked outside and saw about a third of an inch of ice covering everything, from tree branches, to the sidewalks and roads, to cars parked outside. The whole city had become a giant ice-rink, it was freezing, and we had absolutely no power. By the third day, our cat’s water froze over inside our apartment. We coped by driving (taking our life in our hands on the roads) to places that had power, such as a church, the mall, and a restaurant. Otherwise, we were just really cold and uncomfortable for a really long time. These types of events are jarring and upsetting, and they also present opportunities. One opportunity is to practice letting go of attachment. Often discussed in the context of eastern spiritual traditions, attachment involves clinging to reality being the way we want it to be. In the case of the power outages, we might want to be warm, comfortable, able to use our devices, watch TV, and so on, and when we can’t do these things it’s upsetting. It’s even more upsetting, however, if we absolutely must be able to do these things. Letting go of attachment involves acknowledging that things are not the way we want them to be and letting go of having to have what we want. Everyday life presents numerous opportunities to practice letting go of attachment. Perhaps the bus is too late, there are too many people on the bus, the only dinner food in the house is something we don’t like, we have to wait in line for something, someone criticizes us, people are driving more slowly than we’d like (although, see my previous post on the “left-lane hog” issue), and so on. When these types of things happen, it can help to start from a stance of acceptance of reality as it is. Then, ask yourself if you’re clinging to a different reality – one that you want but that doesn’t exist. Do your best to let go, stop clinging, and relinquish your attachment. Allow things to be exactly as they are, even if you don’t want to. See what happens. Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.