While growing up in Serbia, I witnessed some extreme events in the country. I am not talking about crime in the country or wars, I am talking about the world with power cuts. Just couple years after NATO bomb Serbia, the country was still trying to rebuild itself. During those tough times people all over the country would lose power and water for days. The same fate effected my family as well, for almost a week. After reading the book Station Eleven, from Emily St. John Mandel, I was able to recall so many of those memories. While she makes people think about life with no technology, I can vivid memories of it. There is not a better way to imagine life without technology than to take it away, and that is exactly what Mandel did to show her readers how reliable to technology we actually are nowadays. Back to my story, once the power cuts happened in the country my family and my cousins were all in one house. Phones did not work, lights were off, computers did not work…etc Bringing back these memories brought me to realization that at that time we lived like people in middle age did. Would it be weird if I tell you that one of my best childhood memories were made at that time? Even though we did not have all of the “unnecessary” things to be happy, my family and I had some of the best times together. My parents and my cousins were not able to go to work, they did not have a job (they were unemployed) and all of them were living in the moment with no stress. Every night my dad would make a fire and everybody would come together around the fire. We would be there for hours listening to funny stories and singing.
Peace,
Duka