I had a thought the other day about how our world would be so different if electricity had never made it into our homes and industry. The thought came as I drove past a house with a huge pile of split wood cascading down a side yard and a man was outside splitting even more to add to his pile. Smoke billowed from the house chimney.

I realized that much of our time and personal energy would be used each year to gather and store and prepare materials for heat. The air would be much more polluted with wood and coal and oil smoke. Natural resources, like woodlands, would be even more depleted.

While environmentalists lament that farmers are clearing trees for farm land these days, the lack of electricity would not have stopped that, only perhaps slowed it down because we would not have the use of heavy equipment to knock down great swatches all at one time. But we would have harvested the wood anyway for fuel and building material.

Of course, without electricity, we might not have as large a population to house and heat and feed as we would not have refrigeration and remained dependent upon the ice man to keep things cool in the summer. The mind shifts into a vision of horse drawn buggies and hard manual labor. Electricity changed many things.

It also changed our access to health care. There is an advertisement on TV talking about how plastics have saved the day, so to speak, by allowing hospitals and doctors to treat a patient with lots of plastic items then dispose of the contaminated items. Not much need to sterilize cold steel between uses if you can just toss it away. But electricity also changed our pharmacological options. Most of the prescription and over the counter medications our society uses today would not be available to everyone — even if available at all. The cost of manufacturing would be extremely high, distribution would be problematic.

It is the same with our beloved essential oils. Thanks to electricity, we are able to extract and process high quality essential oils that supplement our health needs. We have alternatives to toxic materials. I am grateful for the extremely high standards of doTerra International. I’m grateful to have access to oils like Frankincense and Myrrh (especially during this holiday season). I’m grateful to those who bring us reliable electricity. I’m looking forward to a time when it can be obtained in ways that more renewable (such as with wind or solar power), because we should never be content to just continue to consume without improving things.