Many of us had it drilled into our heads to turn the lights off when we leave a room. Considering the urgency of the message, as a child I believed the waste was in the hundreds of dollars. Even as an adult there have been a few accusations flying around our house about who did or did not flip the switch. 

 

The other day a friend said she is done with that directive. 

 

"I have seasonal disorder. I leave the lights on, because it helps." Her tone was defiant, perhaps toward her parents, or maybe the bill collectors. But it was her story and she was sticking to it. 

 

I bet such drastic measures cost less than therapy. I decided to look it up. After an exhaustive search of three minutes I found out that the average regular light bulb uses up a cent's worth of electricity in an hour. You know, that coin that isn't worth the time it takes to pick up off the sidewalk. More efficient ones only use a tenth of that. Try putting that in your piggy bank. In fact one comment (surely from an energy mogul) said that if you are talking about winter, the heat from the bulb can actually contribute to warming the house and is therefore essentially free. 

 

How about that. The prickly words that have passed between John and I were over pennies. That was more of a waste than the switches ever caused. 

 

It can feel daring to redraw the lines of acceptable behavior. For many years I held firmly to the practice of making phone calls after eleven p.m. or else on weekends. Rates were cheaper then. I recall the anticipation of dialing my oldest sister for the first time when she lived across the country. Dad put her on speaker phone so we could all savor the magic of her voice. My father even recorded it on a tape player so we could listen again, since it was expensive.

 

But somewhere along the line those rules became obsolete. Now I can text my kids when they are in another time zone or even a different county without breaking the bank. 

 

It makes sense to rethink some of the decisions we made long ago. It could be that instead of serving us, we have fallen into a pattern of serving them.