I’m publishing roughly one article a week. It’s not a remarkable achievement, but it’s not something to be ashamed of either. It’s a rhythm that allows me to put content online that I feel is mine, that I consider quality, or at least the quality I recognize as possible for me right now. Every now and then I skip a week, I know, and it’s the biggest mistake for someone who should write consistently, but it happens. And maybe that’s okay. “I have to” makes me anxious, and anxiety isn’t allowed here. For a while now, I’ve often found myself thinking about something I don’t understand. Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s a different way of looking at the world, but every time I hear about someone who is irreversibly affected by cancer, I can’t understand it. Or rather, yes, that’s how life goes, not everything goes smoothly, and we accept it. But cancer is a heavy legacy to carry with us to Mars. After decades of study, research, and discoveries, I don’t understand how it’s possible that science hasn’t yet managed to truly cure this disease. And every time I think about it, I’m reminded of a contrast that’s always been with me: on the one hand, there are people spending billions to go to the moon again, as if it were really necessary, or to build space stations and pursue the dream of the universe; on the other, there are hospitals falling apart, departments understaffed, diseases that continue to kill as if we were still in the last century. It’s too obvious, right? Even Steve Jobs couldn’t do much, and he had money.
It’s the commitment that’s missing.
I grew up with the myth of space. Star Trek, Star Wars, spaceships, and the idea of galloping through the Galaxy as captain of my own ship. That world shaped me, made me dream, taught me that technology can be a bridge to infinite usefulness. And even today, that world is all of me. And yet, I don’t understand why we struggle so much to prioritize things. As a kid, I didn’t even understand the thought of someone dying of cancer. It was all distant; if it didn’t affect me personally, it hurt too little. Now, however, even if I don’t know the person, that thought, at least for a while, afflicts me. Today we live with diseases that cause enormous suffering, for those who suffer from them and for those close to them. We don’t understand them only because of the damage they cause, we don’t truly treat them, and above all, we don’t try hard enough. The reason why eludes me. Why are some people dreaming of Mars, yet others can’t even set up an oncology unit? Why do we invest more in rockets than in medical research? Why do we treat essentials as if they were trivial details?
I think of a banal example, like waste management. It’s become a market, a business, a cost that grows year after year. Yet, it should be a common good, something that concerns everyone, like health. There should be little men digging to find a plastic cup to put in the right place for recycling. Is it too expensive? How much will it cost our children? The ones we say we love to death?
The private sector tries to save, to optimize, rightly, to make money. But there are jobs that can’t be treated this way. There are activities that must be done well, without compromise, because they concern people’s lives and well-being. When we mention “creative finance” and say that a butterfly flaps its wings in China and the stock market crashes in Madrid, we feel like we’re “knowing something.” Instead, a plastic cup kills a dolphin which, excuse me, weighs 200,000 times more than a butterfly, and nobody notices.
And so I find myself in this strange position: with one eye still fixed on the stars, on childhood dreams, and the other fixed on the earth, on the cracks we continue to ignore. It’s not wrong to dream of space. It’s not wrong to look beyond. But when I’m alone, I just say, “A little less among the stars and a little more on earth,” to be responsible with serious matters. It would certainly do some good. After all, what are we going to do on Mars if we don’t enjoy it? Why am I convinced we don’t try hard enough? Because we know how to be fantastic, and when we want to and when we’re united, beyond everything, we can do anything.
Save the world.
Thanks four your Time
L.C.
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