Bedrock, Bruises, and Broken Dreams

Corruption has been here longer than our family names. My parents saw it as kids, their parents too. It's not a season; it's bedrock. And yet, we act like it will suddenly change overnight just because we dropped a comment on social media. That's not empowerment. That’s delusion—the system tricking us into thinking we did our part. It's like liking a post about a movement against hunger, but with our own shelves fully stacked.

But we love that illusion. It feels validating because we can hate something together, virtually. We mistake the warmth of the bonfire for movement, not realizing we’re still standing in the same cold night. That's often the only degree of our activism: synchronized outrage. Digital karaoke—same song echoing through a hollow night, “This Country Sucks,” everyone shouting the same chorus, but nobody truly stepping up to leave a star.

We've grown comfortable staying on the negative without ever truly progressing. Many are satisfied with their supposed contribution to the cause, mistaking complaint for momentum. It’s protest as background noise—like the hum of a broken streetlight, always there, but too faint to light the road.

The working class punches the clock, feeds the system with taxes, fights for a sliver of fortune, and often can't even vote because the system runs on their hours. Meanwhile, others—those perpetually dependent on government aid or stuck in economic inertia—stand at the ATM, waiting for the next payout, and yet hold collective sway over the country's fate.

We find ourselves standing in front of a concrete wall that won’t budge, pounding until our fists are broken, proud of the bruises. But progress isn't measured by the decibels of collective knocking—it’s in the rerouting, in finding variables we can actually control, even if that means abandoning the wall entirely. The traffic jam doesn’t clear because everyone is leaning on their horns; it clears because someone found another way. Perfect the honk all you want—the ones buying helicopters are the only ones escaping.