There are small heartbreaks in life. Losing your sock in the laundry. Forgetting your takeaway coffee on the counter. Realizing you’ve been talking on mute in a meeting for six minutes.
But then there’s a different kind of heartbreak. A deeper one. A personal one.
The moment your charger breaks.
Not the polite, “oh dear, it’s not working” kind of break. No. I’m talking about the betrayal. The I thought we had something special kind of break.
Because a charger isn’t just a charger. It’s a lifeline. It’s your passport to the digital world. It’s the invisible umbilical cord between you and the glowing rectangle that knows your banking details, your memes, and your late-night shopping regrets.
Chargers Are Not Built for Forever
Let’s be honest: chargers have commitment issues. According to The New York Times Wirecutter, frayed cables are among the most common electronic failures, especially with Apple’s infamous Lightning cables, which have been roasted online for years.
They bend, they twist, they live double lives under the couch. And then, one day, they die in your hands like a wilted rose.
Engineers call it planned obsolescence; the not-so-secret strategy of designing products to fail just enough to keep you buying replacements. But when it’s 2% battery and you’re racing to plug in, what it feels like is betrayal.
The Five Stages of Charger Grief
When your charger fails, you go through it:
- Denial – “Maybe if I bend it at a 67-degree angle while holding my phone upside down, it’ll work.”
- Anger – “This cable cost R500. R500! And you break on me now?”
- Bargaining – “Please, just 5% more. Enough to order a new one. I’ll treat you better.”
- Depression – Staring at the dead screen, wondering how you’ll survive without TikTok tonight.
- Acceptance – Pulling out the drawer of sad, half-dead cables you swore you’d throw away but kept… just in case.
Why It Hurts So Much
We like to think of tech as cold and logical, but our relationship with it is emotional. When something as simple as a charger fails, it’s not just a piece of plastic breaking, it’s trust. It’s that little reminder that even the tools we rely on most can let us down.
And yet, what do we do? We forgive. We buy another one. We plug back in. Because the truth is, we’re addicted to the lifeline.
Maybe broken chargers are trying to teach us something. Nothing lasts forever. Wires wear down. Batteries fade. People, projects, even passion can fray if stretched too thin.
But the lesson isn’t despair, it’s maintenance. Care. Backup plans. Investing in things that last. Because betrayal stings less when you’ve prepared for it.
And maybe, just maybe, we should stop stuffing our chargers into bags like we’re folding origami with live wires.
If you smiled, sighed, or side-eyed your drawer of tangled cables while reading this, hit that subscribe button. I write about tech the way I live it: messy, curious, and occasionally tragic when the Wi-Fi drops.
Days in the Life of Mo 
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