Do you really believe, brother, that you are free?
When the alarm rings at six-thirty and you rise to sell eight hours of your life
for a salary that doesn’t taste like bread but like paper watermarked by the central bank, which prints fresh billions every quarter so that what you earned yesterday will be worth less tomorrow.
Do you really believe you are free when your taxes pay for bombs falling on children whose names you will never know, and you pay because otherwise they’ll come for you?
When the keys to the apartment you call yours hang around the bank’s neck for the next thirty years, and every transfer is a shackle with variable interest.
When you have no time to hug your own child because you’re afraid you can’t afford a second, let alone a third, so you postpone love until retirement— a retirement that might never come.
When in the supermarket every tomato is perfectly red, perfectly round, perfectly tasteless, just like your day, just like your dreams in A4 format.
When you stare at the screen and know that in a year, maybe two, your boss will replace you with a model that doesn’t sleep, doesn’t get sick, never asks for a raise, and never wonders what it’s all for.
So tell me once more, calmly, straight into the mirror:
Do you really believe you are free?
Because if you do, then what the hell is freedom?