Was COVID actually after all a good thing?

Travelling to Girona airport today, I was suddenly struck by how ridiculous life has become in today’s Westernised society. Most of the vehicles on the motorway were caravans or SUVs on their way to the Costa Brava for their holidays. There were cars of course from France but also from the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and even further afield. Not only that, I was going to pick up family who had travelled by plane as countless other families were doing.

What’s so unusual about that?

Well a few years ago I would have said “nothing”. However that was a couple of years ago. Since then a lot of news has passed across our screens about the climate crisis. Not only that, parts of the world are burning and people are dying due to the heatwaves that are hitting our Earth day after day. Just today in Girona it has been forecast to be 43°C. There are forest fires out of control in Portugal.

So, at what point do we say, enough is enough?

Now?

Okay, tomorrow?

You are right, tomorrow isn’t that convenient. Well, how about then Thursday next week? I have a hair appointment to colour my hair but I think I’m free in the afternoon…Not only that, but actually doing something might harm economic growth! Really?

No!

We need to stop this mentality!

It needs to be immediate. Now. We need to stop.

Stop flying by plane.

Stop travelling in cars.

Stop our holidays to far-flung places.

Stop to travelling to competitions, entertainment or gatherings that suddenly seem to be these integral activities in our daily lives.

Stop to massive enterprises who are ruining the environment to the point that even I am uncertain of my children’s immediate futures, let alone their later years.

I am not saying no to fun. I am saying consider if our home is being affected by the crisis.

I am not preaching and saying that anyoneiin particular is to blame. I am just sitting here, at the time in a traffic jam at 35°C in a car with no air-conditioning being gradually cooked alive. I am saying that I am part of the problem. I have my car in the traffic jam that is emitting noxious fumes, becoming part of the “essential” holiday traffic. Just a week ago I was in the UK when the weather was wet and mild, and a boiling world becomes far from our thoughts.

What is the expression? “Out of sight, out of mind?”

It’s so easy to forget, or to get involved in family life. However, don’t you find yourself as well over a cup of tea or in a queue at the supermarket thinking through life’s questions?

When did it become part of our culture that we had to have a holiday to an exotic destination?

When did it become important to travel by plane for a journey which would have taken 2 hours by train?

Why do we need to eat sugar cane from some distant island in the Indian Ocean, or have to go on a business trip to another country?

COVID showed us that travel didn’t have to be integral in our everyday lives. It demonstrated that we wouldn’t suddenly die if we couldn’t access that tropical avocado from the supermarket that was an hour’s drive from our home. I know that COVID was horrific, but surely it demonstrated to our society that other ways of living are possible? Children could play in the streets once again and birds returned to hedgerows.

Yes, I am having a rant, but please remember I am having a rant, not only at “other” people but mainly at myself. I am the one who has just recently used a plane and is now sitting in holiday traffic with the rest of you.

But really?

Surely the news is telling us something?

With massive pangs of guilt, I eat my chocolate bar that is also environmentally-unfriendly (*sigh*) and go through once again the ways in which I could help save the planet.

Okay.

Perhaps not save the planet but do something, anything.

I think what I can take from this is that yes, we are all fallible. We all forget, or else get caught up in our own lives. God, the amount of problems people have in today’s society, I think we need to be thankful and proud we are all coping that well.

Smoothing out the wrinkles of today from my furrowed brow, I reassure myself that I am not a monster, I am just human. We all fail at countless things every day. It’s the courage to pick ones-self up and continue through the countless days ahead of us that counts. The tiny individual successes will, in the end, hopefully add towards the global environmental actions taken by people across the world.

Tomorrow is another day.

It will be the day I will put my plastic bowl I bought today into my sink like some other villagers in Prats. When it is full of “grey water” I will go outside my front door and water the village flowers. Apparently I won’t be the only one, but even if I was, it shouldn’t matter.

Tiny gestures.

MidLife Crisis In France