My heart aches as I stand in the light bulb aisle of Home Depot,  looking for an LED light to replace the incandescent bulbs that went out of production at the beginning of this month. The saleswoman asks if I prefer a soft white or a warm white—as though between the two either is less harsh.

I wonder if the members of Congress who passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which slowly outlawed the manufacture of incandescent bulbs, have ever sat beneath an LED or Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulb. If they have, they will know that it induces a sort of drowsy numbness—something I learned recently when my roommate brought home a set of Nanoleaf LED bulbs with an advertised 30-year life span.

After a few minutes sitting in his room, we both realized that there was something almost nauseating about the quality of the dull light. That the makers of Nanoleaf—or any manufacturer of efficient bulbs—would be deluded enough to think that I would want to spend the next 30 years with their product is beyond me. And not only are their life spans unbearably long, but the manufacturers want to charge $20 per bulb. Over time, we are told, they save us money. I’d rather eat the extra cost and avoid having my living room look like an interrogation cell.

Are we really meant to believe that the ozone will close up and the polar ice caps un-melt if we insert these terrible light bulbs into every socket of our homes? On the other hand, LEDs and CFLs are a kind of modern-day miracle: Somehow they produce a light that is at once harsh and very dim. It’s like seasonal affective disorder crammed into a tiny bulb.

When I am asked if I want a Compact Fluorescent Light, the only thought I have is that I don’t want my light to be compact, nor do I wish it to be florescent. I want a light that will incandesce across my room, filling it with a familiar yellow surf, and remind me that it was not with wax or kerosene, but with incandescent bulbs that man conquered the night.

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Humans became modern when they could stay up at night penning documents and tinkering with inventions, and later, watching Netflix into the small hours of the morning. The same light that I type beside shone on the page as Winston Churchill composed his famous lines, “we shall fight them on the beaches . . . we shall never surrender,” and as James Joyce sat in his dingy foreign chamber finishing ” Finnegans Wake. “

With these new bulbs, we will usher in an era of global disarray. Political negotiations will become rushed and aggressive as foreign leaders rub their temples and hurry out of the Oval Office. Every restaurant will lose its Michelin stars as guests complain of migraines. Children will fear their nightlights, and lovers will be forced to romance each other without the aid of mood lighting. Our brows will remain forever furrowed, and we will yearn for a simpler time when bulbs cost 99 cents and didn’t make us feel like we had cataracts.

Over the past year, I have seriously entertained the notion of hoarding incandescent bulbs, and my instinct is obviously not an uncommon one: It now seems easier to buy a gun than it is to track down and purchase 60 watt incandescent bulbs.

I imagine what will happen when the filaments in my final incandescent bulbs grow weak, and I can hardly read my notes before me. Will I no longer be able to write at night? Or worse, will living with CFLs and LEDs make every day feel like I have just spent nine hours plastered before a computer screen? One day, soon, I will turn on my light and hear for the last time the signature, explosive death rattle of an incandescent bulb, and I’ll hold a vigil for the light that shaped and witnessed more than a century of human history. Tender is the light, Keats might say.

In my lightless room, I’ll sit for a moment and wonder how many more times in my life I’ll watch a bulb go out again. As I look to my dead bulb, I’ll think of the poet again and whisper: Darkling, you were not a piece of technology born for death.

Mr. Aciman is a writer in New York and the author of “Twitterature” (Penguin, 2009).