They say a mirror shows our best attributes in a way a camera never could. It doesn't expose every flaw. It just shows you. And every picture that's been taken of me, every honest look, has been necessary for my growth.
Like much of the rest of us right now, I'm behind on a stack of bills piled up in my phone like remembrances of everything promised to us, with little to show of those promises. I keep telling myself the bank statement doesn't tell the whole story. That the system designed to track every misstep and label us as credit risks won't even exist anymore.
But still. I'm in the reality.
You open your phone and hear people talking about quit your job, go live off the grid, stop giving money to corporations, only to put it back on the charger and look outside to see the world still turning. To love the performance but not the sacrifice.
The age old question of what are you willing to give up comes to mind. When others speak of this they're usually talking about long hours, missed days with family, the typical grind of becoming. What I'm referring to is different. How much of myself am I willing to give up daily in order for this thing to work out. Fear. Doubt. Complacency. A desire to do nothing when I should be doing everything.
I say this while my leg is still in full extension, inside this messy room, lying on a couch that has started to sink from my presence. I hit decline on another attempt to collect a debt. I wonder how it feels to be on the other end of those calls. And whether the ones who've extracted millions off the backs of our labor, our inventions, our creations, get them too.
Pay your debts, they say. All while extracting every promise from us and then telling us to work harder.
The system is crumbling. I don't know who goes down with it. But I believe there's a renaissance on the other side of this. Not like the ones before it. Because this one comes after we've already had a taste of what's been disguised as freedom, just with a different label. A new movement that knows exactly what it's moving away from.