I was outside with Chiara and Aurelia pulling weeds and trimming plants when the sky suddenly turned black and the wind picked up out of nowhere. Within seconds we were scrambling to move cars into the garage and had ourselves inside while the trees were bending nearly sideways. The power flashed three times and was out. Before we knew it the storm was over and all we were left with was silence. The washing machine stopped full of water. The air purifiers were off. Several windows were open and we were left with exactly the same experience throughout the neighborhood: silence.
There were no cars on the street driving by, lawnmowers, music, just silence. You could hear a pin drop in our home and each step on our century-old oak floors could be heard throughout the entire house. We proceeded to cook dinner on our gas stove and eat in the silent dark. The rain finally stopped, and we set out for our nightly walk, further fueled by our desire to escape our dark house. To our surprise, the damage was well beyond what we could have imagined. Hundreds of feet of ancient oaks were on their sides, knocking over adjacent trees and branches like pins in a bowling alley. Several unfortunate houses had trees leaning on them and poking through their roofs. The insurance teams were out surveying the damage, tailed by an array of tree removal companies. The sight was devastating.
Yet, as is always the case, with the bad comes the good. People began to escape the confines of their powerless homes left and right, like the characters in Plato’s cave allegory, with dilated pupils as they looked up into the light. With no television to incapacitate their brains, many were pulled by the allure of what may be going on outside, where people were socializing, birds were returning from shelter, and a beautiful lack of car engines and electricity-powered noise left nature feeling like it must have a century ago. Several individuals, I am sure, managed to stay distracted on their phones, scrolling and clicking while their brain cells screamed “slow down and let me think!” and somehow ignore the tornado-like winds and incredible wreckage, but the majority seemed to be knocked out of their ongoing anxious/depressed/angry quiescence fueled by their devices of distraction with a swift flick of the wrist by old Mother Nature. People were out in droves conversing, telling stories, and helping remove branches and leaves from the streets. Looking around, one saw beautiful humanity and realized what it is like to be part of society and community. What has been usurped from us by our digital overlords was abundantly clear to all, at least for this brief moment.
Mother Nature also hates political signs, as she decided to crush one with this 50,000 lb oak tree.
Connecting to the Past
The moment did make us think that this is, perhaps, how things used to be. Before the obsession with fueling our mental disease and division by watching and reading the news, excessively politicizing everything (and talking politics at every moment), the narcissism of social media, the ADHD fueling devices, and the overly left-brain utilization of modern society, this is the calming and pleasant way we spent our time in our communities. As Neil Postman comments in Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve the Future, “Think, for example, of how the words ‘community’ and ‘conversation’ are now employed by those who use the Internet. I have the impression that ‘community’ is now used to mean, simply, people with similar interests, a considerable change from an older meaning: A community is made up of people who may not have similar interests but who must negotiate and resolve their differences for the sake of social harmony.” Additionally, he reminds us that real community requires face-to-face interactions, even if they require trees torn from the ground to make it happen.
No wonder the world is anxious, depressed, mentally and physically unhealthy, and getting angrier by the second. Perhaps we just need more power outages to reset us to a time before these devils derailed humanity, when face-to-face interactions were the norm. Perhaps if we turned to real, genuine interactions with others and spending more time outside and in nature, many of our problems would magically go away.
More remarkably, we met several teenage neighbors who have lived only houses away from us for three years. Some teenagers we had never seen outside—no catching a baseball, walking around or sitting on the porch, lighting fire crackers—you know those things kids used to do—it’s as if they did not even live there. Yet today, we chatted like we were old friends, humbled by the power and magnitude of Mother Nature. These same teenagers have likely watched their mental health get squashed by oppressive rates of depression and anxiety. We all know why, and moments like this help illustrate it.
Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn’t know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”
― Randall Jarrell
The Not So Acute Stress of Nature
After being surrounding by seawater in Naples during Hurricane Ian, we often talk about how people respond to the stresses of nature. It is fascinating how we generally view the wrath of nature, which we have no choice but to sustain and prepare for, as it seems to have a much more benign effect on us than those other longitudinal stresses in life: other human beings, bureaucratic workplaces where people circle back during countless waste of time meetings, devices and their resulting Pavlovian response that has rotted the minds of our supposed wise elders, the media and news and their fear smut, and the academic straitjacket placed on us by our academic overlords who recommend how we live our life (more fear smut). While these stresses seem to drive most of us insane and even to an early grave, there is something about the stresses of nature that, while devastating at times, seem to be more tolerable than the homemade ones. Perhaps in more ways than one a higher power humbles us humans back down to reality.
I ended the night by sitting on the porch and sipping on a nice glass of Cornas staring into the sky and waving leaves and branches, and listening to the birds. Few cars were out due to storms. The most obtrusive sound I heard all night was a train whistle in the distance. The world was nice, my brain was calm, and the silence was like music for my soul. Imagine if this happened more often than once in a blue moon? This entire experience reminded me how the people who built my home nearly a century ago spent their evenings living in it. They were “forced” to be outside, working in the yard, conversing with neighbors. They were “forced” to be together, helping each other out and feeling like a community. And yes, even when a tree is smashed through their roof, forcing them to laugh.
Maybe turning the power off should become a more frequent occurrence. Or instead, we can turn off our TVs, put down our devices, and step back outside to the silence.
© 2025 CDR Health and Nutrition, LLC. All Rights Reserved.