If time were currency you would spend less on the bullshit.
You would.
You would stop handing entire afternoons to people you don’t even like.
You would quit spending Tuesday arguing with strangers who will be forgotten by Thursday.
You wouldn’t donate perfectly good years to jobs that make you miserable, relationships that already died, family arguments older than the furniture, or the desperate need to explain yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.
If someone told you that you had exactly $1,000 left to your name, you wouldn’t throw $400 into a fountain just because someone irritated you on Facebook.
Yet people do exactly that with time.
Every fucking day.
And unlike money, nobody knows the balance.
That’s the part they leave out.
There is no little number glowing at the top of the screen.
No receipt.
No warning.
No overdraft protection.
Just the clock.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
And everyone is so hung up on something.
Politics.
Religion.
Money.
Gender.
Who somebody sleeps with.
What somebody wears.
What somebody believes.
What somebody does with their own body.
Who is allowed to say what.
Who is offended.
Who should apologize.
Who should disappear.
Who should be punished.
Who gets to decide.
Meanwhile the clock keeps eating.
I think the world is getting darker.
Or maybe it has always been dark and someone finally turned the lights on.
That’s possible too.
There was a time when terrible things happened quietly.
Behind closed doors.
Inside institutions.
Around dinner tables.
In little rooms where nobody asked questions because asking questions was considered impolite.
Now everything has a camera.
Everything has a witness.
Everything has a screenshot.
Everything has a timestamp.
Maybe humanity didn’t suddenly become horrible.
Maybe humanity finally got night goggles.
And now we can see what has always been creeping around after dark.
Some days I would still like to go back to my bubble where I belong.
My little private kingdom where the world can scream outside the gates while I drink coffee and mind my own damn business.
Unfortunately, the gates have Wi-Fi.
And the monsters learned how to use notifications.
There is always another emergency.
Another scandal.
Another outrage.
Another person demanding that everybody stop whatever they are doing and care immediately.
The strange thing is that somewhere underneath all that noise sits the only emergency nobody seems particularly interested in discussing.
You are going to fucking die.
If you need to hear it again, please reread that sentence.
Not eventually in the poetic sense.
Not someday beneath a beautiful sunset surrounded by everyone you love while violins play softly somewhere.
You are actually going to die.
So am I.
So is the person ruining your Wednesday.
So is the asshole who cut you off in traffic.
So is the woman who doesn’t like you.
So is the man who thinks he controls you.
So is the politician yelling into a microphone.
So is the billionaire building another bunker.
So is the person refreshing your page waiting for you to fail.
Everyone currently behaving as though they own the earth is renting.
The lease expires.
Nobody knows when.
Which makes our obsession with controlling each other particularly strange.
You might as well do whatever the fuck you want.
Within reason.
Don’t end up in jail.
There are cameras everywhere.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Because apparently we have built a world where nearly everything can watch.
Phones know where we have been.
Devices collect pieces of our behavior.
Platforms learn what holds our attention.
Messages, searches, contacts, purchases, locations and habits leave trails behind us like footprints through wet cemetery soil.
Convenience became the most charming stranger at the masquerade.
We invited him inside.
He remembered everything.
Sometimes I wonder why humanity is so obsessed with watching itself.
What exactly are we afraid of finding?
Or perhaps the better question is what are powerful institutions afraid we might find?
Maybe the sheep aren’t sheep anymore.
Maybe that was always the mistake.
Maybe beneath all that wool were teeth.
Maybe someone finally noticed.
Because something has changed.
People question things they once accepted.
They question institutions.
They question traditions.
They question authority.
They question why someone else’s morality should determine what happens inside their own skin.
They question why the dead should continue governing the living simply because the dead wrote the rules first.
And yes, generations clash.
They always have.
One generation builds the room.
The next rearranges the furniture.
The next knocks down a wall.
Then everybody acts shocked that the house looks different.
There are people still gripping the steering wheel with both hands while everyone in the backseat is screaming that we passed the exit twenty years ago.
Bodies.
Marriage.
Work.
Gender.
Money.
Success.
Family.
Freedom.
Everything is being renegotiated at once.
That feels like chaos when you are standing inside it.
From far enough away, it probably looks like evolution.
Every revolution does.
Not necessarily the kind with torches and broken windows.
Sometimes revolutions are quieter.
A woman saying no.
A man walking away.
A child refusing to inherit the family hatred.
Someone quitting the career they were supposed to want.
Someone refusing to be ashamed.
Someone deciding that tradition is not a sufficient explanation.
Someone asking the most dangerous question ever invented:
Why?
That single word has probably frightened more powerful people than any weapon ever created.
Why?
Why do I have to?
Why can’t they?
Why is this illegal?
Why is that normal?
Why does your belief become my restriction?
Why should your fear become my cage?
Why are you watching?
Why do you care?
Why can’t I leave?
There it is.
The question beneath the question.
Why can’t I leave?
Human beings have spent thousands of years trying to figure out how to trap one another.
Walls worked for a while.
Then borders.
Then laws.
Then debt.
Then shame.
Then social expectations.
Then algorithms discovered they could build cages without bars.
Beautiful cages.
Personalized cages.
Cages filled with exactly the things you like.
You don’t even have to lock the door when the prisoner doesn’t realize they’re inside.
Which brings us to the soul.
Everyone wants to know how to trap one.
Religion tried.
Governments tried.
Lovers tried.
Families tried.
Employers tried.
Advertisers got surprisingly close.
Fear probably came closest of all.
Build the maze.
Put something desirable in the center.
Teach the creature the route.
Reward obedience.
Punish deviation.
Repeat until the creature stops looking for another way out.
Simple.
Except somebody underestimated the creature.
What happens when the soul turns into a rat?
Not the pretty white laboratory rat obediently running toward the cheese.
I mean the ugly little survivor living beneath the floorboards.
The one nobody can kill.
The one who learns every wall.
Every trap.
Every sound.
Every opening.
What happens when it stops running toward the reward?
What happens when it smells the poison?
What happens when it realizes the maze only works because it agreed to keep playing?
Maybe that’s what we’re watching now.
The tactics aren’t working like they used to.
Shame doesn’t hold everyone anymore.
Authority doesn’t automatically equal truth.
Tradition doesn’t automatically equal morality.
Titles don’t automatically equal intelligence.
Money doesn’t automatically equal virtue.
And being watched doesn’t automatically mean being obedient.
We put on our night goggles.
Now we can see what creeps in the dark.
That creates another problem.
Once your eyes adjust, darkness isn’t nearly as frightening.
You start recognizing shapes.
That monster is greed.
That shadow is fear.
That whisper is control.
That scratching behind the wall is somebody trying desperately to preserve a world that already ended.
They will call it protection.
They always do.
Protecting society.
Protecting morality.
Protecting tradition.
Protecting the public from itself.
Maybe some of it really is protection.
Maybe some of it isn’t.
That’s the difficulty of living in the maze.
The walls don’t announce whether they’re keeping danger out or keeping you in.
You have to figure that out yourself.
And while everybody argues over who built which wall and why, something continues moving silently through the corridors.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Time.
My oldest lover.
The only one who never lied to me.
The only one who never promised forever.
The only one who told me from the beginning exactly how this relationship would end.
I just wasn’t listening.
None of us were.
We were too busy being offended.
Too busy being right.
Too busy proving something.
Too busy collecting things.
Too busy watching strangers.
Too busy allowing strangers to watch us.
Too busy preparing to live.
Then one day you notice the lover sitting quietly at the edge of the bed.
Older somehow.
Beautiful still.
Patient.
Waiting.
And suddenly you understand what all those ticking clocks were trying to tell you.
Time was never chasing you.
Time was never imprisoning you.
Time wasn’t even the maze.
It was the currency you kept dropping along the way.
Every argument cost something.
Every miserable relationship cost something.
Every year spent pretending cost something.
Every dream postponed until someday cost something.
Every hour spent worrying about people who wouldn’t attend your funeral cost something.
And eventually you reach into your pocket.
Your hand searches the lining.
Nothing.
That is when the joke finally reveals itself.
You spent your entire life trying to escape the maze.
You blamed the walls.
You blamed the watchers.
You blamed the rules.
You blamed the people who came before you.
You blamed the darkness.
You blamed the monsters.
But the door had been unlocked for years.
The rat figured that out before you did.
It wasn’t trying to escape the maze.
It was trying to escape the person who kept choosing to stay inside it.
Because time is a fucking commodity.
And we are going to die.
The question was never whether you could get out.
The question was how much of yourself you were willing to spend before you finally walked through the open door.
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