How to Blackout
The lights went out.
My partner and I turned to one another, surprised. There was a flicker of excitement in the room, a quiet curiosity for what had just happened. No warning, no explanation—just sudden stillness.
It had happened once before, last summer in Lisbon, on a blistering hot afternoon. That time, the power had returned within twenty minutes. Our building’s generator had come to the rescue, restoring order before disorder had time to settle in.
This time was different. There was no generator. No return.
One hour went by.
Then two.
Then three.
At first, we continued on as usual. Reading the news. Messaging friends. We even called my sister in Canada to say hello. But soon, even those thin threads of connection faded. The cellular network went down. Our phones stopped working altogether.
There we were—overlooking the city of Lisbon, without power, without signal, without sound. The silence outside felt heavier than usual. Not the hush of night, but something unfamiliar. Something that made us pause.
A scene from a Netflix series came to mind. Robert De Niro in a story where a terrorist group orchestrates a one-minute global blackout—and the chaos that follows. The imagination didn't need much fuel to wander. There were echoes of lockdowns, old fears surfacing in new forms. And yet, despite the mind's tendency to forecast disaster, something else was happening, too.
A kind of joy had begun to take root.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, we turned our attention inward. Not in meditation, not in theory—but in action. We began cleaning. Closets we hadn’t touched in a year were suddenly emptied. Cupboards were sorted. Items we didn’t remember owning found new places or were discarded entirely. It became a spontaneous spring cleaning—a ritual of care, of tending to our space.
We moved food from the fridge to the freezer, hoping to preserve what we could, just in case this stretched into days rather than hours. It felt practical, but also symbolic. Taking care of what we could, while letting go of what we couldn’t control.
Eventually, there was nothing left to clean.
So we sat on the couch.
And we talked.
About the past. About the future. About how we were feeling, really feeling, not just the edited versions we sometimes trade in the midst of daily life. There was a level of presence between us that felt different. Not because we had made time for each other, but because there was no time left to fill. Nothing else called for our attention. No screens. No notifications. No tasks.
My partner said her mind felt more at ease. Lighter. As if something invisible had been lifted. The mental weight of always being connected had dulled so gradually over time, we hadn’t noticed it. Until it was gone.
No information to absorb.
No messages to reply to.
No one was waiting for anything.
Except the person sitting right in front of us.
We found our way to a game we both love—Monopoly Deal, a card game we rarely remember to play, despite how much we enjoy it. Candles were lit as darkness settled in. Our apartment transformed into something quieter, softer.
After nearly ten hours, we found ourselves still on the couch, still side by side, reflecting. It had been a beautiful evening. An unplanned invitation into presence. A reminder of something we had almost forgotten.
We both acknowledged it wouldn’t have felt the same if we were alone. Together, it became something shared. Intimate. Unexpectedly meaningful and memorable.
A part of us didn’t want the blackout to end. But beneath that hope was another truth—what we really wanted was to keep feeling this close, this present, this unencumbered.
We said we’d find ways to carry it forward. To carve out moments like this in our daily life. That was one week ago. Since then, the hours have filled up again. The pace has resumed. The intention, while genuine, has quietly faded.
Many cultures have long embraced their own form of blackout. Whether through rituals, sabbaths, or silent retreats, there is wisdom in choosing disconnection before it is forced upon us. I now understand why.
Disconnection, it turns out, is not the opposite of connection. Sometimes, it is the path to it.
As someone who delights in the new—gadgets, software, AI—I feel no conflict in also loving the moments when all of that slips away. It’s not about turning away from the world, but turning more fully toward it. In its simplest, most immediate form.
And that is how I learned to blackout.
