Slaves By Day, Tyrants By Night

Many of us are slaves by day and tyrants by night. We are unhappy in our situation and want empathy, but we are also the ones who continue the system that creates these situations. It’s cheap food, cheap flights, and these days we even have cheap supplier services to give us what we want at any time. This may represent the worst manifestation of the saying “He who wants to work, will work to the end”.

In this context, we are the doctors who exploit a medical system that lacks resources. We are the ones who buy brands made in countries with precarious working conditions. As a society, we stun ourselves by endlessly consuming and using our most valuable resource: time. This anesthetic is necessary because, if we did not have it, we would poison ourselves with our own disagreement.

Survival is an illusion

Time to support a family we never see, pay for a trip we do not like, or buy a camera we do not use. This time flows through the fingers like ice cold water. Little by little, your legs erode.

We are slaves of the day because we work in precarious conditions and earn just enough to survive. Survive, and maybe watch a dream or two come true once in a while. We are tyrants because we give ourselves to the same system. We order food at the door when we are hungry and know that they do not treat their workers well. We do it because it’s cheap, because it’s fast, and because it makes us feel like we have more free time. The dream of more free time is what makes us slaves by day and tyrants by night.

We accept jobs that do not pay very well. We feel that if we do not do it, someone else will. Maybe they even want to do it for less. Because there is always someone in need. It is this attitude that allows for our current survival, but slowly eats our lives. We end up wasting hours behind a counter, looking at a screen, or driving a bus… While we watch car after car drive past us.

Modern habits are a black hole – we need a personal revolution

What we need is a revolution. Big or small, but a revolution that starts with us. We must stop being slaves by day and tyrants by night. It’s time to talk about poor working conditions. Resist the temptation to buy cheaper things. Remind ourselves that the person at the bottom of the food chain is the one who pays the price in the end.

Put aside the idea that eight working hours is the same as three or four if everything goes fast. Fast food, fast exercise, fast sleep. Why do we want things to be faster in a world that is already traveling at the speed of light? We want to train less and we want everything to be delivered to our house. Why, in a world that is getting fatter every day ? Why is it that we want so much technology if we just end up working more anyway? Why is sales so important even if material things do not satisfy us anyway? Nothing compares to the peaceful feeling when the sun comes up after several days of rain.

Slaves by day but tyrants by night

This “fast” lifestyle is just an illusion that the system has created to give us the idea that we have enough free time and enough resources. But we should ask ourselves, do we really have that? Even those of us who think we have a decent salary. If you did not have all the cheap options, would it still be a good enough income?

We work so much, but do we really make our money in real time? Or is time going faster when it comes to that too? All these quick things disappear with the first breeze if they are not held down by anything. Then it’s just us, face to face with reality, naked, without any clothes to protect us from the cold. We look at ourselves in the mirror but something feels strange. We are ourselves, but we are absent. Far away from our bodies, from the people we love. They are in the living room, staring at a screen and gossiping about people they do not know…