FREE OR CHAINED?

 FREE OR CHAINED?

Do we live free or chained?

Modern chains make no noise. They are not made of iron. They are made of schedules, bills, goals, commitments, responsibilities, expectations, and promises of a future that never arrives. One commitment gives birth to another. One obligation makes room for another. One deadline pushes the next. The links multiply. And we call this life.

Time remains indifferent. Relentless. It does not interrupt its march before a postponed dream, a restrained tear, or a word that remained trapped in the throat. Time does not negotiate. And we keep ourselves busy. Too busy to realize that, while we were trying to keep up with everything, little by little we stopped keeping up with ourselves.

There is so much to do. So much to solve. So much to achieve. But what do we do for ourselves while building an existence that consumes every minute of our existence? Do we work to live, or do we live to sustain the machine we created?

We accumulate money, objects, goals, properties, responsibilities. And we also accumulate what no one sees: moments we intended to live, trips that were left for later, embraces we never gave, kisses that never happened, loves we never confessed, doors we never crossed, noes we swallowed, yeses we suffocated, tears that died before reaching the face. Desires buried beneath an apparently innocent word: later.

And time continues.

Until one day we look back. And it is at that moment that the truth becomes impossible to hide. We look back and see the years. We see the people we once were. We see dreams that once set our chests ablaze and now rest like ashes. We see places where we should have been, stories we should have lived, words we should have spoken.

And we realize that we did not lose our lives in a single instant.

We slowly erased ourselves.

One desire at a time. One dream at a time. One choice at a time. One “later” at a time. We erased parts of ourselves to keep an existence running that demanded more and more while giving back less and less.

When we look back, we find not only memories. We find gaps. Craters left by the explosions of haste. Spaces where a story should exist, yet there is only silence. There should be a journey there. A love there. An achievement that truly mattered. An unforgettable night. A courageous decision.

But it is empty.

And emptiness tells a story too: the story of everything we allowed to die while we were too busy trying to survive.

We rush to fulfill life. We pay bills to sustain life. We work to organize life. We plan the future so that we can finally live. And, in the meantime, life itself passes before us.

There is a silent form of disappearance: continuing to breathe while the person who longed to live slowly falls behind. The body remains. The routine remains. The name remains. The documents remain. The obligations remain. But something inside us is gradually taken away, until one day we realize that we have become experts at completing tasks and strangers within our own existence.

And then we look ahead. For the first time, without enough distraction to hide the inevitable, we see the end of the line. It was always there. We simply did not look. We do not know when it will come. We do not know which morning will be the last, which embrace, the last conversation, the last glass of wine, the last journey, the last kiss. We only know there will be a last one.

And that certainty should be enough to destroy the illusion that there is infinite time.

Yet we keep postponing.

As though there were an inexhaustible supply of mornings. As though next year were guaranteed. As though people would remain. As though certain doors could be opened forever.

They cannot.

Life does not announce its final chapters. It simply keeps removing pages. One morning. One afternoon. One night. One week. One birthday. Another year. And every page torn away takes with it a version of ourselves that will never return.

In the end, it will not be the size of the house, nor the amount of money, nor the number of possessions, nor the number of commitments fulfilled. It will be life itself that asks:

What did you do with the time you were given?

And there will be no answer capable of filling the gaps.

The greatest tragedy will not be discovering that death exists. It will be discovering, before it, how many times we were alive and chose not to live. How many times we held the key in our hands and remained inside the cell. How many times we said “later” while life was saying “now.”

Are we free?

The question remains open.

But the chains are there. And many of them were chains we ourselves accepted to put on.

Time did not stop.

We are the ones who began to stop.

Stopping dreaming. Stopping taking risks. Stopping feeling. Stopping choosing. Stopping living.

Until one day we look back and realize the most silent horror of all: it was not life that disappeared. It was us who disappeared from it.

And the clock keeps ticking.

J.Kasra — All Rights Reserved