Caught your attention, didn’t I? Yes, I’m being melodramatic. And no, I don’t mean we’re all going to starve. But here in Spain last week, the skyrocketing gas prices caused a strike of the trucking and transport industry. More than simply declining to transport products throughout the country, Spain’s truckers decided to block all the major roads leading to and from the city with their mountainous semi trucks. And food wasn’t getting through– especially the fresh stuff. The produce shelves were bare in just about every grocery store I went to.

Click to enlarge

Now, the strike is pretty much resolved, and things are slowly coming back to normal here. Prices will probably stabilize just a little higher than they were before the strike. But nobody had to go hungry, and if people freaked out and hoarded tomatoes, it was because they wanted to– the Spanish have a flair for the dramatic and I think they enjoy freaking out. But the strike –and seeing all the empty shelves when I went grocery shopping last week– seemed like a sharp peek into a strange future.

I believe our generation is on the cusp of change, and that many of us will see hardships that our parents did not. We have an uncertain future– the only thing certain about it is that things will not continue to be the way they are now. What happened here in Spain last week was, to me, a view of things to come. If we don’t change the way we live soon, this will keep happening… and keep happening… until food shortages don’t last only a week or a few days, but months. And not just in the third world, either.

Perhaps I’m being a little dramatic (overexposure to Spanish culture, maybe), but I really feel that things will, in the next years, come to a head. And I’m excited about it. I like to think that we are all balancing on the wave of a transforming world; what we have lived for the last 50 years or so will be no more. After a time of trial, I hope to see something even better take its place.

Hey, I’m an optimist.

My point? I think we’d better get used to seeing empty shelves.

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