Summer, paper bins and the beautiful human race

I'm back on the Costa del Sol for a few months. It's lovely here right now: Overcrowded beaches, overcrowded streets, car parks, shops and bars. All this in sticky heat, day and night. Can't complain really – it could be much worse. I could be in Benidorm. Or Baghdad.

To escape the masses I'm mainly hiding in my little room, working and hoping that the fan won't die just yet. But since I can't sit in front of my screen every hour of the day, I need to come up with other stuff I can do without having to leave the house. Cleaning the kitchen for example.

So last Friday I bravely entered our communal cooking area. You know, I find it really fascinating how kitchens always end up super messy in very little time. It's the place where you prepare your food – shouldn't this be a sacred place? And if it's a sacred place, shouldn't it be kept clean and tidy all the time? After all, have you ever seen a messy church or temple?

Anyway, I did what had to be done and in the end I was left with four bags of recycled rubbish. The organic stuff went into the garden compost, the rest – glass, paper and plastic – I took to the nearest recycling bins.

While I was emptying some remaining paper bits into the paper bin, a woman walked up. I'd say she was in her early twenties, although her age doesn't really matter. She carried a big cardboard box that was covered almost entirely with a layer of thick plastic foil. When she arrived next to me, she was just about to throw the whole thing into the paper bin. I looked at her, slightly confused: “You know that there's lots of plastic around your cardboard box, no?”

She looked at the box, then she looked at me, then back at the box. Thinking.

“Ah well”, she finally said, dumped everything into the bin and walked off.

Needless to say, I was speechless. I mean, what can you say when someone has just robbed you of your last tiny bit of hope that one day, somewhere in the distant future, things will be alright?

I removed the plastic from her box and threw it into the other bin. “Ah well”, I tried to encourage myself, “it's just a ride...”

On the way home I stopped at the sea for a cleansing and refreshing dip into Mediterranean. Parked the car, walked to the shore and... Well, and now comes the really sad and absolutely mind-boggling part: The sea looked like the kitchen before I had cleaned it. WTF?

So let me get this right: We take oil, a precious gift from the earth, turn it into plastic, wrap all the shit that we buy in it, unwrap what we buy once we are home, throw the plastic away and then, yes, then we swim in it. Again, WTF? It's so bad, calling us stupid monkeys would actually insult the poor monkey race. Looks like we didn't evolve from monkeys upwards, but downwards!

How will we ever be able to solve huge problems such as the current refugee tragedy, the ongoing wars, hunger, injustice and global pollution if we are unable to separate our own plastic and paper rubbish? It's like, how can you dream of playing Champions League when you can't even hit the ball straight? As I've said, mind-boggling.

Normally I try to end my blog articles with some positive message, something uplifting to help creating a better world. Today I don't feel like it. Not because I'm miserable and depressed, not at all. I'm actually feeling quite happy today. But the thing is: If you take a step back and look at us humans, what you see is a very messed up race. You, me, everyone!

I'm not surprised that more and more people are getting cancer – because we ARE a cancer! And if we don't change ourselves very soon, I fear that our planet will undergo some hardcore radiation and chemotherapy. And of course we know what happens with this kind of treatment: Almost everything will be killed and chances of survival are minimal.

The only real chance to cure a cancer is to radically change your life: your bad habits, your diet, your attitude. Looking at humanity as one organism – are we able to do that? I wonder...