Has the battery on your cell phone ever dipped below 15% and you didn’t have a charger and wouldn’t be home for hours? Did you get nervous? Chest feel tight? Breathing become rapid? Did you begin to conserve power by not checking Facebook every ten seconds?
I woke up last Friday morning and my phone was dead, blank screen, nothing. Spent a few minutes holding down every button, but nada. Should I run to Verizon? It was pouring outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere until late that afternoon, but had a lot of work to do. I decided to stay put. I emailed my mom saying if she needed me to call my neighbor. Then I got busy. And for the next six hours I was superwoman.
No one wants to lose power with these devices we’ve become addicted to, but it happens. To avoid this, we put a lot of energy into being prepared. We carry around battery packs, chargers, and take note of where the outlets are in Starbucks. Heaven forbid we fall off the e-grid.
But what about ourselves? How many of us take the same precautions to keep our bodies from dipping into low energy? Imagine if we put the same effort into keeping ourselves from losing steam as we did our phones. Sure it takes time to cut up celery and spread almond butter on whole wheat bread, but isn’t it advantageous to take a few minutes here and there, as opposed to doing nothing and then being faced with a real issue that stops us in our tracks? Just like our cell phones and tablets, our bodies give us signals when it falls into low energy—sleepy, hungry, thirsty. We need to listen to those warnings and not assume another cup of coffee will do the trick.
In all honestly, when my phone didn’t spring to life, I felt anxious, but the sensation lasted only seconds. Soon peacefulness came over me as the pressure to text and post and tweet fell away, and I happily settled into the realization that there was nothing I could do.
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