La Voz de Galicia – March 7, 2025 →
Life today is a paradox. Grocery shopping is more expensive every day: prices keep rising non-stop, yet salaries remain the same. Money, when we have it, sits in a bank that, despite having been bailed out by all of us, still decides to charge a fee just for keeping it there, or refuses to assist you during the only hours of the day when you can actually go in person to resolve something. If someone has special needs, to apply for assistance (such as disability support), you need a PhD in patience and another in paperwork management; and even then, there’s no guarantee the help will arrive before that person no longer needs (meaning, before they die). And I could go on listing the paradoxes that make our existence increasingly incomprehensible… like when a problem arises, and you have to call a customer service line or a government office: it’s already impossible to speak to an actual human being and get it resolved. And then I wonder, how did we reach this level of disconnection between the life we live and the life we are being pushed to live? At what point did we accept this social contract?
And yet, life goes on. It goes on because we want to live it. We hold on to it because it is full of small joys and sorrows that make us feel that is worth being here, surviving, for that coffee with Luisa, for visiting José at the nursing home, for making Maruxa laugh, or for watching the camellias bloom. In this existence full of contradictions, we must remind ourselves daily of what truly matters in our lives and anchor ourselves to that, so we don’t lose hope, so that we can simply be. Despite everything.
