Do you ever sit in line at the car wash and think about the people in developing countries who would be in shock to see such a thing? Huge populations of people face water shortages or no clean water at all or they have to carry water for miles in buckets just to meet their basic needs, and we’re over here parked in a giant shower stall with rainbow soap and high-pressure sprayers, sewer lines, and a heated dryer FOR OUR CARS.
I think about these things often. While I’m playing on the floor with my kids, I often think about the engineering that went in to making our carpet and that there’s an entire flooring industry. And I think of the pad and the subflooring under our carpet and all the solid construction that supports that subflooring. And then I compare all this to the households in other parts of the world with dirt floors and Lord knows what for makeshift roofs.
While I’m grateful I live in an industrialized country with a more advanced infrastructure like public schools, running water and indoor plumbing, a functioning travel system, and superfluous developed resources, I’m reminded that we’ve got our issues, too. Realizing things like the water crisis in Flint, Michigan or the power crisis that affected most of Texas can occur in this country is eye-opening and unsettling. Maybe this is part of the exercise. We tend to take things for granted when they work as expected.
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