Priorities

Sometimes there’s a moment that makes you think about life and how you’re prioritizing your time. Yesterday I had one of those moments.

The electricity power grid in Spain (where I live) stopped working. There was an electric blackout in the city where I live for more than 12 hours. During those hours, we didn’t have information about what was happening. Internet connectivity was intermittent. Phone calls worked 10% of the time. It was almost impossible to communicate with family.

Initially, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The weather was great, so it seemed like a great opportunity to spend some time in the park. And that’s what we did, trying to abstract ourselves from the situation and hoping for a quick recovery. However, as the hours passed without good news, we had to be more practical.

Our choice was to get enough food and water for 24 hours and be together as a family during the whole ordeal. We spent the time at home with a small FM radio tuned to an official government station. That was the only connection we had with the outside world, and it was how we became aware of the progressive fixes that were being made to solve the issue.

Fortunately, electricity came back on at around 2 am. However, the whole episode was a good lesson in understanding what our priorities are. What my priorities are. As a human being, what do I really care about? What is really important?