Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

Coupland’s line plays on the double meaning of “lighting”: literal illumination and the figurative clarity that comes from a change in conditions. A “power failure” removes the engineered brightness of modern life—screens, signage, constant visibility—and can restore darker, older forms of perception: starlight, candlelight, and the heightened attention that comes when routines are interrupted. The aphorism also fits Coupland’s recurring interest in late-20th/early-21st-century dependency on infrastructure and technology: when the grid goes down, people may briefly rediscover quiet, community, and a sense of scale beyond the built environment. The joke carries a critique: sometimes less power yields more insight.